Artist Statement

I have for a long time maintained a practice of holding on to flowers that were given to me long after they are dried and dead (I understand flowers to be dead very soon after they are cut from their plant but understand they are often seen as a spectrum of slowly dying until the are past resembling their original form). I have flowers from high school given to me by friends I no longer speak to and boyfriends who did not last. In college when I experienced many lonely years my mom sent me a bouquet of flowers for my birthday. I started painting these bouquets wanting the arrangements to last  longer than they held up in college dorm rooms though they were rarely fresh when I got around to it. Throughout my undergrad years I developed an aesthetic of painting dried flowers in bright colors that expressed the love and joy I felt from receiving them but in a state that was a pale substitute for the love I wished to be shown.

My work relies on personal reflection of my life that I often paint through many times before I eventually pull out all the things I am trying to say with my art. My acrylic and oil paintings generally emphasize color and mark making; I want to create an image of how I see the world and emphasize the uniqueness of seeing it with my own eyes and making it with my hands. My practice also involves a range of other mediums and experimentation to explore and investigate ideas and develop them further.