Through processes of erasure and concealment, I engage with the history of materials and the traces of interventions. Driven by perfection and self-imposed pressures in my own life, I often find echoes of these obsessive quests in my artistic practice. Here, I search for a space to escape or distill worldly concerns, curious to see if some grace can be found in aggressive struggles to perfect and purify, as well as through the inevitable revolts against these aims. As such, I find inspiration in the delicacy of material combinations, barely perceptible shifts of light and tone, and the ache that can be present in the nearly perfect.
At odds with the muted stillness of the finished works, my process often involves violent engagements with found objects. Working with and against the imprints of personal remembrance, I remove essential elements of an object’s form through the application of corrosive materials, such as bleach, salt, and paint stripper. The object’s integrity and original function is destroyed, but a new hollow is created, opening and deepening the object’s existing essence. Eventually caving to the impossibility and undesirability of complete flawlessness, the work exists in a liminal state and softly struggles to embrace what it lacks.
My work takes a variety of forms—painting, photography, sculptural interventions with found objects, installations, and documented actions. I am currently exploring the limits of communication through performances and video collaborations with another artist. These explorations relate to the physical effort involved in moan, in which the body becomes disconnected from the almost inhuman sound it produces. As in previous works, sound and action becomes the material that fills emptiness and strains to express emotion in a way that words cannot.
