artwork

Since it is in my nature to deconstruct the yin and yang of everything - as much as I love art and education - in my studio practice, I try to de-academicize my own education of artmaking. When painting, I do not care if colors get muddy. I don't mind awkward or "bad" compositions. I use pre-stretched canvases and rarely build my own. I mix materials together that you shouldn't - like tempera and oil paint. I cover "finished" paintings that I do not "like" in fabric so that the viewer cannot see/engage with them. I use cheap paints and media that are often connoted as craft materials such as pipe-cleaners and glitter. Instead of hanging my work at an expected exhibition eye-level, I lean them against the wall or hang them as close to the ceiling as possible.

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The biggest compliment or reaction I can get from a viewer about my artwork is that they don't "get" it, it's too weird, random, illogical, amateur, even stupid. I am interested in finding new contexts of aesthetics that re-define artmaking as I have come to understand them/know them, experimenting with visual ideas that would be considered "wrong" or "bad"to a general public - even in a Contemporary context. I am not just interested in breaking "traditional" art rules. I am interested in imagining as if rules never existed within an art historical context.

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At the same time, the content of my work is extremely meaningful and deeply personal. I take each concept I engage with very seriously. I show respect for developing ideas and representations in my work by being harsh and critical. I deconstruct all and any artistic choice I make for days, sometimes even months - not as a means to assess their contribution to a visual outcome, but to understand their value in my storytelling as a self-aware human being.

 

In my study, I have a desire to identify or relive a realization, epiphany, or a memory without ever reaching it, or putting exact language to it - leaving it indefinite - teaching myself to recognize, value, and accept things in life that are significant but allowing myself to let them be unexplainable...