Artist Statement 

Three years ago I discovered my body has a limit that resides in my neck and travels through my shoulder. As a result of repetitive motion, it makes its way down my right arm in the form of a dull ache, hindering my ability to render fine details for hours with oil paint.

                                                                                                                  So I started to spill water—

dousing thick pieces of paper on the floor of my studio, then dropping liquid watercolor paint onto the paper’s skin. I would pour, drip, and lift, and cause the current of the water to spread, like a spirit, into space. 

This space transcended one dimension and became two as it absorbed the water gathering beneath and all around it. I surrendered to the swift nature of the spilling, its freedom and desire to disrupt stillness. With one quick gesture, a sliver of liquid red expanded outwards and disturbed the creamy white that had settled. The two colors swirled together, then nervously dispersed. 

In this way, spontaneous planes of intuition bloomed at my feet, a birth. I worked into these planes with pencil, acrylic, pastel, collage, and wax, until the lesions of light scarred the surface and color configured new entities. I switched between the use of my right hand and my left, listening to the hum of my limit as it grew louder. The developing images were abstract and metaphorical. A space between the external and the internal began to open. 

These images are colorful portals from our world of clear delineation to a world of fluidity and enigma. Their environments are composed of natural elements—terrestrial, cosmic or celestial, and elements of my body in interior form: anatomical, embryonic, uterine, physical. The flashes of fluorescence present in these images symbolize pain.

Anam Cara, a book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue, explores the understanding that landscape is the firstborn of creation, reflecting a kind of silent consciousness overflowing with soul. Human presence brings a recognizable intimacy to the anonymity of landscape. The porous nature of skin allows light from the world to enter and flow through it. The body is therefore a threshold, imbued with elements of the earth, and when this corporeality dissolves, we naturally become one with it.

Russian abstract painter, Wassily Kandinsky, believed that color has the power to make a deep impression on the soul. In this, art is connected to the soul as an unconscious bond or inner need. Similarly, American Modernist painter, Georgia O’Keeffe, viewed abstraction as the clearest means of conveying and clarifying the intangible thing within herself.

On a raw, hand-stretched canvas, I painted the image from an ultrasound of my neck and combined it with this process of spilling to give the anonymous, intangible part of myself an appearance, as it lives with and always moves through me.

                                                                                                                  Through spilling, my limit grows wings.

It learns to adjust to this vessel of flesh, warmth and thought—the land of belonging that I know as my own.