Tahlequah's Burden (Detail)

MFA Student

Major: Painting

Graduation Year: 2021

Artist Statement:

Through intuitive sensory experiences, I see the natural world and then seek to translate this experiential dialogue within my artistic process. My work functions as a catalyst to envision an evolved thinking and mindset of being in the world. By imagining the sublime, utilizing the aesthetics of emotionality, and pulling from observations within ecology, the sensory, and folklore traditions, the Others (non-human creatures) are invited to tell their story. My artistic motivation is to provoke the viewer and elicit compassion and reverence for the natural world by remembering the ancient bond of coexistence and connection between humans and Others.
The narratives within my paintings promote these new ways of considering our relationship and history with nature by imagining the hybrid body. This figure deconstructs and decentralizes the human form, breaking down imagined barriers between all species and creating a new allegory of interconnectedness and ecocentrism. I intentionally create a chaotic painting language to mimic and re-envision different ways of seeing and understanding alternative realities, revealing light in the darkness, the understood vs. the hidden, and the acceptance of the world's magic. My work acts as a creative ritual of mourning to re-construct memories and embrace loss, thus capturing time and breaking down human exceptionalism barriers. These paintings advocate for the power of the imaginative and sensory world to convey an emotional, ecological aesthetic as a means of captivating the viewer through recognizing beauty and poetry in the grotesque, damaged, and dying. Often, the coyote figure stands as a symbolic, supernatural metaphor based on the canine’s ever-changing history and long-standing relationship with humans in America. This folkloric trickster tells their side of the story of feminist resilience, adaptation, and a reverence for the crumbling ecosystems they call home.