It is necessary to uncover unnoticed memories and emotions to discover how your subconscious shapes you. I’m interested in the tension between the beautiful and the unsettling and how that can entice anxiety and disorientation but also enchantment and seduction. My intuitive direction and latent feelings lie in an abyss carved by my identity as a woman of color growing up in the United States. Much of my work examines feelings of anxiety and discomfort with relationships, society, and the people around me. Perhaps what excited me the most is the intimate and energetic sensation that uprises during the gestures of painting. It is like a cathartic release. The process of making acts as my form of therapy, expelling feelings from within me that I would not be able to express or release through words.
I tend to personify inanimate objects. In particular, plants interest me because their lively yet static nature suggests a tension between the animate and the inanimate, and there is something comical but painful about their existence that I am drawn to. Images that resemble nature and foliage tend to reappear throughout my most recent works; they are abstractly depicted and somewhat humanized through their bodily and visceral nature.
Recently I found that the mixture of painting and sculpture allows me to directly manifest these qualities through their tactile, gestural processes. This combination provides a tension between two-dimensional and three-dimensional realms that I am attracted to. It further emphasizes that the painting is an object or a portal, yet it is still honest that the painting is a painting, bouncing between illusion and reality. Treating my paintings as objects instead of images has allowed me to generate ambiguity, where I am vulnerable about myself in my work but I do not reveal too much to my audience.
My sculptures are a conglomeration of industrial yet natural qualities and familiar yet novel forms. I hope to evoke a sense of discomfort but fascination, again playing with the paradox of the beautiful and unsettling. Sculpture allows me to express and put into reality the physical forms of feelings and memories. I value the realness, interactivity, and tangibility of sculptures, and I wish for viewers to empathize with the forms I create.
I find that my work is beginning to stray away from pictorial representations. Meaning can be found in factors other than literal imagery that can be equally significant, such as the material, color, and process. This is something that I wish to continue to push and explore in my practice. More than anything, I am eager to continue making; as an artist, there is nothing more empowering than being able to make.
