Artist Statement

How do you portray the season in someone's life? I’m trying to mainly stick to very candid and non-posed photos with a lot of movement to capture the idea of a snapshot of someone's life. I wanted to portray the symbolic idea of seasons that society typically assigns to stages of life, but with a new twist on a lot of them, with my personal experiences shaping the composition and subject matter. Because of this, I have four central pieces to my portfolio, each for a different season and stage of life. I wanted to portray nature and the transient beauty that plants often symbolize. One of the other questions I liked a lot was “how do women juxtapose their surroundings?”, and, while this is not my main question, it did bring my focus to the female experience, with no men as the subject of any of my works. Most of my works also have this imaginative, almost wonky perspective. I think it adds to the general day dream feeling that a lot of memories possess, which is echoed in the light beams and colors, which are not inherently realistic. I’ve also really been trying to focus on adding texture to pieces to create more visual interest, with layers of paint laid thickly to come off of the canvas.

I’ve been inspired by several of the most famous impressionist, and expressive impressionist artists, as well as symbolist artists. Artists like Monet and Cezzanne have inspired me with their natural landscapes, but at the heart of my work is people. Because of this, I was heavily inspired by Berthe Morisot, an expressionist painter who paints mainly women in domestic everyday scenes. It was a huge learning curve for me to learn how to paint portraits, especially faces, as someone who is used to painting very loosely and landscapes in particular.