Artist Statement

In my work, I create visual experiences meant to inspire sensation, focusing on the body in relation to technology, the synthetic, and our interactions with digital environments. Humans’ intertwined relationship to an electronically-constructed world is ever-expanding and profoundly impactful. There are benefits, but I am concerned with potential unforeseen ramifications. How does consistently interacting with the unreality of invented and intangible spaces alter our experience of the physical world? Physically and psychologically, what do we carry with us when we disconnect? On a deeper level, how are we changing to adapt to these artificial environments? These are questions that we don’t have full answers to, as this synthetic, digital world we’ve invented is a relatively recent phenomenon in the grand scheme of human history.

My drawings are exaggerated imaginings of what could be happening in the interior of the human body as it combines with the digital world. Through the variety of styles and conceptual lenses that I have used in making, I illustrate the complexity of our existence in our new techno-environment. The artworks are very textural and layered in their material construction and in how the given subjects are combined. This physicality is important for grounding the viewer and engaging them in a sensorial way, starkly contrasting our frequently screen-based experiences. Some of the stylistic approaches to drawing I use are more psychological and expressive, while others engage in a more clinical, distant view. In the Wired Bodies series, I explore how we are affected on a macro level, in literal, physical ways, where humans have literally woven our physical, limited selves with the expansive synthetic so tightly that it seems impossible to separate without injury. In other groupings of work I describe the relationship more abstractly, highlighting the distortion of the experience of self when we come into contact with technology. There, I consider it in a more psychological and destructive sense, particularly in my x-ray drawings. In medicine, x-rays are used to search for the source of a problem, as I am doing metaphorically here.

In all this work, I express the confusing and complex nature of the rapid pace of our collective adaptation to our own creations.