Artist Statement 2022
My art is entirely autobiographical. It’s so deeply personal I’ve spent my entire artist life working to construct layers of symbolism to mask it. By thoughtfully creating these systems and rituals, I have been able to widen my studio practice. I have been working on Mylar for almost a decade. The surface allows me to play, disrupt, deconstruct, illuminate, and experiment.
On a philosophical level, my work is an exploration into the transformative power of landscape, memory, time, and the ritual of daily observation through abstraction and the widening power of the horizon in its various forms. I seek to find mystery and presence through meticulous investigations of daily life, many of which are recorded digitally during my walks. My various approaches to seeing and recording are permutations and meditations, informed by my very specific history, growing up inside of a 5-mile radius in South Western coal town Pennsylvania, while in contrast living in Northern VA, commuting 70 miles a day. Home is where I am, and through intentional, repeated, and widening circles, I map my spaces using careful selections of my photo documentation to record any changes that may occur from day to day, in an effort to translate those observations into my studio investigations.
The horizon, as an idea or actual form is the physical embodiment of reach, longing, expansion, and in many ways, the unattainable. It is a line –a horizontal pull through physical, atmospheric space. The horizon is always in sight but never within reach; the infinite and finite; the point where light meets dark. It beckons and draws me into the immediate present, while simultaneously stretching my memory and imagination for other places in time.
Ending 2022 on a “high” note with a hike to the top of Mary’s Rock in the Shenandoah Mountains.