artist statement

I create what I do in order to communicate things that have captured me. In a lot of ways, visual art is a proxy for communication for me, built for situations where words feel lacking. It doesn't feel like I choose what ideas make their way to my work; rather, it feels like these ideas have trapped my mind in a way that they can sneak themselves into everything I create. I have a lot of disparate interests, and they bleed into all the work I make—they fuel creation, and in return, those fascinations get explored and leave room for the next one to take me. I live with these fascinations in symbiosis. My goal is to use this fuel to make larger spanning pieces capable of telling stories both narratively and within their own.

A lot of my current work involves animals and their symbology, often playing with the meanings an animal stands for and their actual relation to humans and other organisms. Often this is simply because I think a certain creature is incredibly captivating within that moment in time, others since it has an interesting history and a visual symbol or emblem. Currently, I am working on a comic that features characters that are human-animal hybrids. Their animalistic halves inform what I want the audience to think about them both at a glance, and their relationship to other fully human and hybrid animals. I think the challenge with this sort of work is pushing past people's preconceived notions of what any given animal is—good or bad. After that point, it is easy to play with what any animal can mean. Any creature can mean protection or danger,  be a protagonist or antagonist, possess a luster that no other can quite match. 

An animal that always comes to mind for me is the snake, something that is a recurring piece of the work I make. It's an animal whose literary symbolism is of a monster or that it will tempt you into making an “evil” choice. A person who’s “a snake” is scheming and untrustworthy. Snakes, in reality, are cute, solitary creatures that act more out of fear and rarely want to interact or be near a human. I want to bridge and explore these two sets of identities that many animals have. With this exploration, my work can always be intricate and have depth for those who want to read into it, but still be immediate and striking.