As an artist, I have always been interested in fragmentation: how life may be experienced in bits and pieces, as a fragmented vision, rhythm, or narrative. Through the combined techniques of collage, drawing, and painting, I work alternately to clarify and obscure images, to shift between fragmentation -- the bits and pieces -- and integration. Working in this manner enables me to explore a liminal space between destruction and creation. This tenuous compositional state is what excites me in art because it is most like the fragility and fleetingness of life itself.
Through the years my work has continuously revolved around an exploration of body imagery, female identity and loss. As an art therapist working with children from violent homes, emotionally troubled adolescents and homeless women, I have been especially interested in understanding how children and women heal from emotional trauma. The education I received from the hours spent with these clients has informed my personal iconography. In the mental health field, the notions of fragmentation and identity reconstruction are central constructs. These ideas are also central to my work as an artist. The materials and processes used with my clients have informed my work as well. As I made painted paste papers with women in a homeless shelter, I would collect their discarded scraps and later incorporate these remnants into my own work. In doing this, I am reminded that being human is a continuous process of making and unmaking: collecting, discarding, reintegrating and healing.
In looking directly at destruction and loss, I hope to confront and honor the fragility and tenuousness of human life. Through this work, I pose these questions: How are our bodies connected to the natural world? How is it that we somehow coexist with destruction and creation, with loss and renewal? How can art capture what is both the visceral and the ethereal in life? With these paintings, I hope to reconnect the viewer and artist, helping us find our place within an oscillating, imperfect, but living landscape.
Through the years my work has continuously revolved around an exploration of body imagery, female identity and loss. As an art therapist working with children from violent homes, emotionally troubled adolescents and homeless women, I have been especially interested in understanding how children and women heal from emotional trauma. The education I received from the hours spent with these clients has informed my personal iconography. In the mental health field, the notions of fragmentation and identity reconstruction are central constructs. These ideas are also central to my work as an artist. The materials and processes used with my clients have informed my work as well. As I made painted paste papers with women in a homeless shelter, I would collect their discarded scraps and later incorporate these remnants into my own work. In doing this, I am reminded that being human is a continuous process of making and unmaking: collecting, discarding, reintegrating and healing.
In looking directly at destruction and loss, I hope to confront and honor the fragility and tenuousness of human life. Through this work, I pose these questions: How are our bodies connected to the natural world? How is it that we somehow coexist with destruction and creation, with loss and renewal? How can art capture what is both the visceral and the ethereal in life? With these paintings, I hope to reconnect the viewer and artist, helping us find our place within an oscillating, imperfect, but living landscape.