Kylemore Abbey - Limited Edition of 25 Photograph

I was born in Calgary and studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design where I received my bachelor's degree. As an emerging Canadian artist, I primarily work with photography, creating narrative images to explore the notion of identity. The conceptual grounds of my artistic practice is rooted in an interest of human perspectives, specifically how no two people will ever experience anything in quite the same way. No one can ever see exactly as how another sees, hears, feels, or thinks. Our senses are always completely our own, our awareness of the world, of reality, revolves around how we experience it as individuals. This is how we define ourselves; identify ourselves to be separate from each other. My current body of work investigates how being part of a couple challenges ones notion of singular identity, of individuality. Often, there is a conflict between what we want for ourselves and what we want for our relationships with others. You used to tell yourself you would never change for anyone. Then you realize you've been doing it for years even if you weren't aware of it. Now you're angry, disappointed in yourself and perhaps even guilty. Your glorious ambitions have become quiet secrets inside of you. It's not their fault though. They never asked you to change, never asked you to give up anything. What happened? Are you dug in too deep to reclaim the parts of you that you abandoned in pursuit of your love? "Places That I Go When You're Not With Me" began as a memoir for myself, a way of coping with confusion regarding my identity. It is a self-portrait in a sense; each photograph is a vignette which together form a narrative that represents not only the physical places, but also those I have gone to mentally and emotionally, questioning the validity of the selfish existence that I yearn for and coping with the feeling of unfulfillment that accompanies it. The narrative is told in the first person, giving the viewer my visual perspective and inviting them to contemplate the implied story. The setting and any peripheral characters that may be present are a framework from which point each viewer's own past experiences, values and beliefs inform the narrative. Engaged in these vicarious experiences, the viewer's understanding of their own identity may be challenged.