Painting for me is an act of devotion. I see it as a form of sacred choreography, drawing from my background as a ballet dancer. I show up daily in the painting studio, weaving embodied gestures with paint onto a surface.
Through this process, I experience all of myself in my raw authenticity, including the ugly awkward bits. I learn to love all of me. My paintings are a portal into the space of creation, where I practice the dance between disciplined restraint, and the freedom of letting go.
The tip of my pen, pencil, and brush act as extensions of my optical apparatus and the sensibilities of my body; I connect to the objects I depict. In a sense, I become one with them. In drawing a face, a tree branch, or the surface of a building, it is as if I am touching them. This feels special, this feels important– I feel changed, because I make.
In a world that appears to be rapidly overtaken by artificial intelligence, I sense the profound importance of human creativity which uses materials from our beautiful earth – pigment, ink, water, plant oils, paper, canvas.
These materials capture human thought, gesture, and emotion and mirror them back out into the world, to anyone open enough to slow down, wonder, and gaze at them.