Artist Statement

To draw is to immerse myself in the details; to say what is left unspoken. I rely upon mindfulness in mundane moments—a stitch pulled just tightly enough or an imperceptible line leading my gaze across a page—to keep me in the present. Living with mental illness, the present is a tense that often eludes me. Depression drags me back to the past, anxiety shoves me forward to the future, and trauma pulls me into a liminal despair. Slow artmaking, however, brings me back to this present moment: my hands covered in charcoal, a threaded needle pressed between my thumb and forefinger, and my mind quiet with focus.

By both necessity and curiosity, I am intrigued by the resilience, labor, and balance between pain and hope of life. I record my thoughts through poignant imagery and symbolism of the human body and nature, often depicting my own in darkly shaded sweeps of charcoal. I implement charcoal and secondhand fibers in my work to reflect my psychology and experiences with mental illness, using the tediousness of both mediums to dispel the isolating invisibility of suffering. I am constantly searching for hopefulness in my work alongside the less beautiful side of it, the labor.

In making art, I offer visual language for niche symptoms and nuanced experiences of living with a neurological divergence from the norm. My hope is to offer a common ground where mental illness is discussed without stigma and instead with resonating empathy and understanding.