My artwork consists of multimedia layered illustrations. Every composition is heavily reliant on my imagination and organized as a loose narrative. Whether a drawing or painting, my art attempts to comb the eye through my subject’s story, typically one of fantasy and transformation. Recently, I find myself drawn to incorporating 3D cutouts because of my desire to visually describe a moment in time that grows beyond a flat surface. In my pursuit of capturing fantasy, I reached metamorphosis. Mapping out the enchanting and grotesque nature of this process, my illusions fixate on humans, animals, and their in-between states. Drawing on their similarities and differences in their respective transformations, I encourage my audience to get comfortably lost in my nonsensical compositions. Applying these laws of nature to a range of fantastical narratives allows me to craft pieces that visually expand through using recognizable symbols and popular archetypes in fiction and literature.
In my definition of metamorphosis, there is an exploration of mutating phantasmagorias. Is the change sudden and dramatic versus a planned systemic growth? Will it be violent, disturbing, unsettling, or is it bewitching? What does it mean to absorb and consume another as a form of mutation? This topic of metamorphosis also connects with my fascination with the difference between an animal becoming a human and a human becoming an animal. Specifically, a behavioral metamorphosis, a shift in the mind rather than the body. Furthermore, some of my pieces represent the uncanny, unfinished aspects of metamorphosis as well, not just full transformations. For example, curating a liminal space of experiencing two places at once; the act of peering into the inside out– a fluid state of jumbled change. Nothing is complete in this space of fluidity; you just walk out how you are, whether complete or not.
Originally, my interest in metamorphosis sparked from learning about oil painter Tarsila de Amaral and her husband Oswald de Amaral’s Anthrophaphage Manifesto. The idea of cultural cannibalism and how it empowered Brazil to reimagine what Europe stole from it was captivating to me. I wanted to apply this concept to fantasy-based narrative compositions. Physically layering cardboard, paper, charcoal, paint, and oil pastel helped me tap into the textures of transition and fully commit to making something visually pleasing and bizarre. I continue to strive to be bolder with my compositions and stretch the bounds of literal representations and abstractified ones. I particularly enjoy placing scenes and images within the body of my main subject to signify the digestion of another. Experimenting with charcoal and oil pastel on cardboard allows me to do this with a satisfying grid-like texture. Even when my pieces are completely 2D, like my charcoal drawings and oil paintings, there is a variety of blurred lines and sharpened shapes to communicate depth and a dreamy mood.
