It Happened Even If You Weren't There

MFA Student

Major: Painting

Graduation Year: 2021

Artist Statement:

I have always perceived life around me as chaotic, beautiful and daunting. I try to understand life on this planet as an amalgamation of diverse sources of information that have material and immaterial manifestations. Life to me looks like a collage; it does not always make sense the first time you look at it, but if you pay enough attention, meaning emerges from the chaos.
Painting has given me the chance to touch the world as an interloper that wants to make sense of what is real, and also wants to know what lies beyond. At this moment in time, technology has simultaneously brought us closer to each other than ever before, and shown us how far apart we have been. Painting carries a long history of exclusivity and privilege, but I strongly believe in painting’s renewal as a source for discovery and inclusiveness for audiences and artists alike.
Traditional ways of painting can be used as a means to access the interior worlds of artists. Many artists have the urge to try to understand, document, and shed light onto the events of our world through the filters of unique lived experience. Painting is one device that has the potential to bridge the gap between social and cultural disparity by making available a wide spectrum of ways of perceiving and thinking.
In the studio, I apply the principles of collage, formally and conceptually. My work applies collage methodology within allegorical painting to bridge cultural and social gaps between the maker and viewer so that we can meet inside the work of art.