- The way of the artist is, you know, you're committing to a series of problems.

People are always looking for answers and solutions, but they're maybe not willing to struggle with something for some time.

So I think this act of like wrestling in a creative space is really fruitful.

There was definitely creativity around me.

My mom is an avid gardener and my dad is an engineer.

He was always making things, making instruments, but it was really just sort of my own fixation and just this desire to be discovering things all the time.

Walking and wandering are really important to my creative process.

It's a way of opening up and getting into a more receptive state.

So as I'm walking and wandering I'd say that process is very analogous to painting.

Going out into the world, looking, seeing, searching, this openness to exploration.

Photographing is sort of the entry point into every image.

Multiple photographs that I cut and paste and build these digital collages with to begin and then I'll work through different iterations.

And I'm also a printmaker, so printmaking is very intertwined in how I sort of approach painting.

But silk screening has been very influential, thinking about shapes in the paintings because when you're working with a photograph and silk screening, you have to break it down into a bit map and you're basically turning it into all these sort of abstract dots.

And it really helped me think about breaking these organic shapes into these, this sort of framework for the image.

I really discovered painting through printmaking and it's the transparency of oil-based inks that I was so drawn to.

It allows for a lot of layering in my print.

I work with Akua Ink and it's very fluid and transparent and so I can create these images that are very dense with a lot of layers of color.

And the same with painting.

I work in really fluid washes.

I dilute it with a lot of mediums.

And so, it's a way of building an image that takes time and sort of creates this really dense composite of different layers.

In terms of imagery, I'm really drawn to these sort of tricky spaces that are difficult to enter and that are even abandoned.

Buildings that you might drive past and not think much about.

And it's sort of this way of slowing down and thinking also about how the unconscious is something that is often kind of cast aside, but how it shows up in the landscape in areas that are just left to deteriorate and to unravel.

So the work is really dealing with excavation and pulling back the layers of things, but also entrance.

Like, entering into spaces to learn and to see and to know.

Most of the paintings have these sort of obstacles, like a wall, or a fence, or dense foliage that kind of break the entrance into the space and would require some sort of pulling back and cutting through to enter into it.

I am not particularly painting something to represent a specific landmark or space, but I'm more so approaching the images kind of archetypally so that they're symbolic.

And I think also the work is dealing a lot with origins and me coming home and returning to this place that I grew up in and seeing it with fresh eyes as an adult.

The landscape becomes this sort of record and document for history and layers of time and it's this sort of composite space.

(gentle music) Everything sort of bears limitations and these limitations appear in our lives where we have our greatest gifts.

We can kind of unbind ourselves to achieve more freedom.

There's a lot to be gained by sort of retreating and listening to your own voice and spending time with that.

But I also think community is so essential and relationships are so essential, and I've been very fortunate to have like amazing mentors that are around me and reflecting to me that being an artist is totally doable.

I think we live in a world that really bases success thinking through the lens of scarcity.

And I think that that gets projected on artists a lot because we don't always operate within the traditional structure of income that a lot of people do.

And I think just being comfortable to create your own path and do things your own way, and know that there's so many different ways to do things.

And ultimately, like, if you're using your gifts that you were born with, you know, as a spiritual person I really believe that there is purpose in that.

It will bring you to the places you need to be.