Artist Statement

My work often is representative of emotions and personal experiences that I have experienced in nature. I have always been surrounded by nature and it has influenced my relationship with the environment near me. My intent as an artist is to make the viewer feel a sense of connection to these places, to bring light and attention to the intricate and complex worlds we don’t often see but could potentially feel. Outside spaces have an intuitional impact on us, and we developed this relationship when we were young. I am currently exploring the direct impact that nature has on humans, compared to the impact that humans have on nature. We might benefit more from nature but does nature not benefit the same?

As a printmaker and lithographer I have found that process is a fundamental aspect of my work. With my current practice I have ideas while I begin to make my work, but often find the process is a large influence of what informs my work. Since I work primarily in stone lithography I spend a fair amount of my time working with the stone to appropriately prep it for drawing and printing, which involves a very laborious process of preparation. Each Litho stone carries a story, layers of different images that have been printed off the stone then grained away by hand to then be used again by another person. This idea of mystery that each stone holds is so intriguing to me since my work is also informed by layering. The process of layering is both established by emotional layers of the work, the touchable act of physically layering which is fundamental in printmaking, and the historical layering of old images on each stone is a critical component in my work, as well as referring the layering that we see in natural environments indicated by time, weathering, and growth.