“An artist makes art to tell what life feels like.”

-Marvin Bell

In my current body of creative work, I strive towards communicating how natural cycles of the world around us correspond to life experiences. I take what I know, what I have learned from living with a chronic illness and translate it into a more universal language that steps outside of my experiences. The work focuses on capturing various stages of growth and renewal within an environment that exhibits elements of decomposition and decay. Ambiguous landscape serves as a metaphor for human experience – growth, the elusiveness of life, illness, death, and hope.

Gourds, leaves, hands, and flowers are dichotomous symbols of healing and the resiliency of life or of deterioration and the fragility of life. I am attracted to the aesthetic form of these objects because of the transformations they undergo in distinct stages of growth and deterioration. They can be awkward, elegant, and even grotesque.

Literature and poetry are a powerful influence in my work. Leeks, a poem by Abbot Cutler, speaks of dormancy and renewal. It evokes images from my father’s garden. It resonates with my belief in a person’s interconnectedness with nature, resiliency, and ability to heal. The provocative writing of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Love in the Time of Cholera, I find passages and phrases that evoke images. In Susan Stewart’s book of poetry, The Forest, I see my own images reflected in her words, words that speak of the elusiveness of life, of illness, and of death.