Ritual Artwork

Art is many things to me: a refuge, a daily ritual, a medicine for the mind, a vehicle for learning, a secret code, a public diary, a transporter, a suit of armor, a vulnerable display. Above all, art is an instrument for re-enchanting a disenchanted world. I began exploring art seriously in my early twenties when a painter friend introduced me to modern art movements and figures like Egon Schiele, Art Brut, Kurt Schwitters, Abstract Expressionism and the “combines” of Robert Rauschenberg. I immediately fell in love with their spirit of play and inventiveness, often disregarding conventions about the materials and aesthetics deemed appropriate to fine art. My studio practice still draws on these early inspirations focusing on non-objective abstraction, collage and assemblage. I have always been interested in bringing disparate parts and ephemera into dialogue. In my current works I am crafting structures drawing together different materials such as papers, fabrics, wood and acrylic sheeting. I make marks and develop surfaces on these supports using painting and various printmaking techniques before collaging them into compositions on custom made display panels. An entire series of works can begin from a texture seen while walking down a street or a play of light encountered while driving. Any technique to create an interesting mark is fair game and thus the process is not simply an expressive practice, but an investigative one where I learn about my materials and what I am feeling and thinking in that moment. This experimental and tactile process offers a method of staging the chaotic fragments of ordinary experience into compelling visual displays that are both playful and structurally harmonious. As such they are records of an impulse to observe and reconfigure relationships to the environments I am inhabiting. Personal Bio: I am a self-taught artist born and raised in Tampa, Florida. As a child I was passionate about history and art which I often explored by poring over large books filled with paintings of ancient civilizations and historical events. As an undergraduate at the University of South Florida I completed a degree in European History before accepting a fellowship at Duke University. In 2015 I completed a doctoral dissertation on artisan craft guilds and scientific culture in late Renaissance Italy and have since pursued studio art professionally participating in several juried shows.