Artist’s Statement

A life-altering personal trauma inspired me to examine my life and look at the world differently. Facing mortality, I began exploring concepts of time, seeking answers to what exists at the haunting boundaries of consciousness just beyond awareness. It is a place between reality and dreams where I can unravel the infinite in me by puzzling the fragmented pieces of my life. I realize unconscious discoveries of myself in or revelations through the images of memories long buried, blurring the lines between what is seen, what is not, and what is just beyond.

Rooted is a meditation through the landscapes that have influenced my life. In the malaise of 2020, I found myself liminally placed between my childhood’s eastern geography and my western home – pulled in opposing directions of nostalgia and a frightening present. The experience of a world with an indefinite future inspired me to revisit and reconcile the paradox of life’s landscapes from the isolation of my studio. There I layered and merged the natural beauty of the places I have called home.

Rooted explores the reconciliation of geography’s influence on life’s paradoxical landscapes in search of common ground. It explores the therapeutic effect of time spent in the natural world and how that time positively influences our well-being. This imagined, created world became a place of comfort. It is a call and response on an emotional level to the fragility of life and the search for meaning in the landscapes of our past.