My drawings represent the distinct sensation of recalling childhood memories: a conflict between whimsy and trauma, and a direct contact between the crystal clear and the obscure.

 

I often think of childhood as a jarring dissonance between extreme fragility and a misguided sense of agency. My figures are a synthesis of young girls and adult women from my family, a patchwork of body parts and identities. This composite examines the body as a site of experience and memory. It identifies it as the carrier of the interrelated hierarchies and connections of the family bond, mutated by shared intimacy, loss, and longing, across generations.

 

The characters in my drawings are confrontational, existing as the object of a viewer's gaze. But they also gaze back at the viewer. This communicative gaze questions the figures’ agency and the viewer’s relationship with it: should we worry about them, or let them be?

 

My drawing process is slow and contemplative, using dry materials in a methodical yet intuitive way. I use radioactive colors to contaminate my compositions and distort them, to conflate the pleasant and the ominous.