Artist's Statement

My aspiration is to discover aspects of my personal identity and life experiences, examine how these are similar to those described by others, and use this examination to inspire art that creates a sense of empathy between people. I consider relationships between myself and others through spiritual, emotional, and physiological lenses as I depict a variety of subject matter via a variety of different mediums. I am especially interested in multidimensional mediums, such as sculpture and installation, due to the multimodal effect they have on human senses and emotions.

The subconscious atmospheres I seek to reveal in my work are influenced by the culmination of concepts I hold closest to my identity including love, empathy, psychology, and nostalgia. I specifically select colors, materials, positioning, subject matter, and style according to what kind of feeling I am seeking to replicate visually. Whether this feeling deviates from or aligns with those of my viewers, I enjoy investigating my relationship to them through our collaborative interpretation of the art.

My primary motivation in current works is to find visual strategies that unify viewers through the depiction of universal experiences and concepts. My senior capstone piece, We Feel Better Together, was entirely constructed around this desire for empathy. By materializing my personal image of relaxation and introspection, I strove to elicit those emotions in my viewers so that we may be subconsciously unified in our shared humanity. I hope to continue exploring this concept in future work while participating in collaboration with a wider range of unique personalities.