Artist Statement

I drain my feelings into my artwork. I create strange and frightening works as a way of confronting my personal fears and externalizing my inner trauma. I don't know if I wish that happy moments inspired my art work, but I believe that even the frightening, weird, or what we as viewers might not enjoy seeing can be interesting, beautiful and exciting as well. Artist's such as Francis Bacon, Frank Frazetta, Michael Whelan, Rick Baker, Tim Burton, and George Lucas are inspirations to me. All of the artist's make science-fictional or horror works. They make odd and scary things or at least the works appear to be. They have also created works of real dream like worlds which to us can be frightening the worlds and beings living in them are not familiar to us. The artist's almost trick their viewers into believing that what they see is real and that is my goal. I would like for my work to appear frightening or strange, and to explore the unknown. Viewers of my work, I'm hoping will not think much of what the work is about but to be hit hard right away with a feeling that the work gives off.

M y work deal s with how I feel about birth, life, and death. I think of birth , life , and death as a cycle ; like an endless circle always spinning. Death is a part of life just as much as birth is. We as people grow and change throughout the entire cycle. It is interesting that we start out connected to another person and after birth we become independent in some ways to learn and have our own experiences and to simply live. In life we encounter many different people, things, and events. When we die I believe it was just our time no matter the reason for death. Death happens for a reason and many times the reason is to end suffering and to help us find peace. Most people mourn the deceased, because they will be missed and sometimes because it seems as if they should not have passed at the time. I however do not mourn the dead possibly to be strong for others who are mourning, but also because I feel that after death people could be reborn later as someone or something else, or maybe live on as themselves in the afterlife happily.

I was born, removed from my mother by force of tongs, and afterward I had to have special care because of the yellow pigment to my skin. Sometimes I can still see where the tongs were placed on my head. It is like having birth marks, strange and different from everyone else. When I was four I had an eye operation to correct lazy eye. I wore a patch over one eye and to make things more interesting my mother and I decorated the patch to make it look like a bird. One of the eyes was red so I felt flawed and monstrous but kind of funny at the same time. It was like being one of those silly monsters out of a children's cartoon but in what I thought was a scary situation. Some of my work speaks to this idea because it looks scary but then in some places has a funny twist. There were problems like not being allowed to have my eyes open while the television was on. I remember my father trying to feed me a cookie while my eyes were closed. I was close with my father and mother but oddly enough I was frightened to eat the cookie thinking that I may not like it or that there could be something wrong with it. It was an irrational fear which is partly why the situation was comedic.

Most children crave comfort and security but I was drawn to the scary and horrific. At age four my cousin would have me stay with her while she watched the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. During the entire film I never opened my eyes but of course I could still hear the horror that was taking place and the dark gruff voice of the monster. I would have nightmares like any child. The movies star a tall, sinister, badly burnt man named Freddy Kruger, while my dreams would star a giant monster made of all the vegetables I did not like at the time. It was around this same time I began working with crafts and drawing. Now I have an extreme appreciation for horror and science-fiction films. To me they are works of art. I even enjoy the Nightmare on Elm Street for its artistic qualities. When I was a little older than four I began watching every horror movie that I could but strange nightmares still followed and that influences how my art work is created and designed. Making art helped me deal with being frightened through seeing and feeling fear from a safe distance and living to talk about the experience.

Fear can come in many different forms, but what if you fear yourself? I had epilepsy while I was a child and pre-teen. It was strange that no one could figure out the reason for the seizures. I think at the age of seven when I had the episodes I was simply suffering from stress. I only had two episodes when I was seven but then had a recurrence at the age of twenty. I suppose I had to remind myself of what it was really like. It is a complete loss of control of proper bodily functions. I felt like I was turning into something else and that I could not stop the transformation. I have created some of my artwork to look like it is in a state of transformation while also looking spooky and odd. It is change and loss of control that makes fear present.

It was definitely during part of my adulthood that my work took more of a drastic a frightening turn in relation to the abuse I was receiving. This was something I never imagined would ever happen to me. I lost complete control of my life, and I think that at some point the abuse became more like an experimental tool for my psychology and art classes. I really had time in those courses to think about why I was being abused and why I was allowing myself to be abused as well. I felt closer to death than I ever had before. There were a few times when I thought I should have been extinct, although that would not have matter much because I already felt dead because of the loss of control over my life and feelings. It was as if one of the monsters out of my childhood dreams came to life to make me miserable. Not only was the abuser a monster in my life, but I was my own monster through keeping myself in the situation out of pure fear for myself. It was fortunate that I had art at this point. If I was unable to create I would have gone into a mental illness. I took control of my fear by projecting it into my art work.

My art work is supposed to be relational to trials in my life and feelings. Many of the works are meant to evoke a deep fear in viewers but at the same time have a twist of funny or strange. The work In the Life of a Day Lilly I played around with morphing and changing an object. The sculpture is female reproductive system with day lilies being born, blooming, and dying out of the ovaries, and opening of the uterus. The piece appears some what normal until the strange color of the stamen of the lilies becomes obvious. A charcoal drawing I created titled The Opposite of Falling is all about frightening. It is a normal country landscape drawing with a giant female monster coming out of the ground. She has a direct gaze toward anyone who views the drawing and appears pregnant and screaming. What is truly scary is that a make believe monster is living in a familiar setting. It is a joy for me to be able to create my own monsters. This monster is the only female monster that I have created, possibly as a reflection of myself and the growing fears inside of me.