ARTIST STATEMENT

Being raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I spent my childhood surrounded by an abundance of glowing sunsets, curious color palettes, magical realism, and a cast of vibrant and eccentric characters— I never wanted to let them go! Sentimentality is the impetus of my art. At its most poised, my pieces are whimsical, narrative, and nostalgic. At their most vulnerable, a way to let go. To hold the things I grasp too tightly apart from myself, and give them a home outside my body. I regard each of my pieces as time-based, the final product a collage of memories, close connections, and stories continuing to unfold.

Though I have primarily worked as an abstract painter the past few years, my roots are in portrait painting and photography. Over time I moved towards abstraction as a challenge to myself. When I was younger, I feared being overly personal with my work, and abstraction forced me to confront myself through my art. Allowing the messiness of myself to show through my work pushed me to explore deeper conceptual practices, engaging with both my lived experience and academic background studying the cultivation and maintenance of identity through visual expression, which I have reincorporated into my work as I have begun to approach figurative works from more nuanced perspectives in the past months.

At its heart, my work is documentary, tracing themes of memory and growth through music, emotion, meditation, relationships, reflection, and culture. Each piece lives both as a standalone, but also inherently as reference point in a larger context. When engaging with my art, I invite the viewer to step into another time, place, and feeling.