ARTIST STATEMENT
As a visual storyteller, my mind is in constant narration. I have a special interest in capturing life in unexpected moments, and telling stories through them. Parallel with this passion is my love of allegorical narratives. These often serve as foundation of each piece I create. It is important that my illustrations speak the truth, even through fictional elements.
Mythology, legends, and folktales have captivated me since childhood, and over time inspired my passion for visual storytelling. I like exploring the influence of cultural ethics and archetypes through history, and finding fundamental connections between them. From my own experience, bringing a person or culture’s world to life through a visual medium affirms what is often most important to them. Giving my eyes to someone’s thoughts is a profound experience that sets my life in step with theirs. I’ve realized that the more authentic my personal experience is in the creation of narrative art, the more accessible it becomes to others. I offer frequently whimsical, adventurous stories to the undisguised moments in life that often are obscured by social conditioning. My goal is for others to discover something about themselves through my art. We can relate to one another through stories, and still we all remain unique. As a result, I see my art-making as a discovery of what it means to be a person, and thus strengthening the connection to my true self.
Soft pastel is the primary medium of my strongest work. It began with a simple experiment: I wanted to achieve the soft blending style and fine brush detail of oil paint with a dry medium. Through the use of pastel, I found that I loved working with my hands, and an intimacy spawned with the paper. There were no mechanisms, no tools, no technicalities. My fingers were the brushes, physical motion was the technique, and the separation between my artwork and myself as an artist grew smaller. Soft pastel inhabits the forgotten space between wet and dry media depending on it’s stylistic application, and I struggled coming to terms with the fact that I was not working within convention. Using technical strokes, fat over lean color layering, and soft blending, I paint with soft pastel, and have now come to embrace their oddity.