What it used to be

What it used to be depicts a solemn story of a young child and a father. Their relationship has become strained; at one point they felt love for one another, but as time progressed the love decayed. Through the use of cool colors, gray tones, oil paint, and the cleaner Citrasolv, the work portrays a mood of sadness and sorrow, just as one feels when a relationship diminishes. The father in the background is shown to be fading away, becoming absent from the work itself. Citrasolv was used to create a blurring/dropping effect; everything is blurred except for the main focal point—the child. Reality is altered so the child seems familiar and real, while the father is colored in fading gray.

London

Purple Words

Purple Words depicts the desire of a child for attention. The work portrays the past and future, childhood and adulthood. The neutral colors of black and white represent this duality in time. The background is surrounded with strokes that represent the faded memory. The purple flower stands as the focal point of this work and symbolizes a yearning for attention. The child opens this faded and surreal curtain to show her truse emotion.

Perceptions

A Shopping Expedition

The artist uses a figure—not quite human, and not quite alien—to pull the viewer in. The figure feels familiar, like something real, but it also has a surrealistic twist. The humanoid figure is looking at the viewer, making them feel welcomed into the painting.

Laundromat

The artist’s works are representations of architectural spaces in which color and perspective, memory and emotion interplay. They are based on real, visited spaces that are subsequently altered. These new spaces then exist somewhere between perception and reality. Made void of inhabitants, the viewer can focus on abstract explorations of space that include glimpses of the unknown.

Placidity

Going Over to a Friend’s House

Callum

Pickled

Not Quite Yet

Fat Boy

Fat Boy is composed of three types of paint: oil, watercolor, and acrylic. The black, red, and purple–tinted background is contrasted against the figure’s skin while the green shapes mimic tall blades of grass. The viewer’s eye is drawn to this pop of color, meeting somewhere between what you can recognize and what you can’t.

Untitled

These works are two of a collection of three obscure yet alluring paintings depicting alien-like figures. The artist uses chiaroscuro, the play of light and shadow, to create dramatic contrast, drawing the viewer to the face and to the pupil-less eyes. The artist expressed that this was deliberate as she wanted to illustrate a disconnect between the soul and the physical form. The artist also said this was intended to make the viewer consider beauty standards and how society views individuals. As these works depict these figures that are strange and outlandish, the artist manages to make them captivating, reversing expectations on what we perceive to be beautiful.

Autobiography

I want to feel whatever you think I should

Collage

House Keys

Keys often represent domesticity and the household; however, by allowing these keys to be run over by a train, the artist is able to find a greater understanding of their relationship with divorce and separation. Their once perfectly serrated ends are now malformed, preventing them from fitting into a keyhole. The keys are used to convey ideas of separation and alienation from one’s home while simultaneously being a recognizable everyday object

Reflect

Although it might seem rather frivolous, the living room, for some, is a place of affection. The reflection depicted in the work is not just a minor detail that shows texture of tiles. It is also a method that can indirectly illustrate a reflection of the past and a temporary return to the loving, intimate moments one shares with family. The work is experimental for the artist in that it is painted much like a watercolor except with an opaque, rather than translucent, nature. Reflect does not only show off technical skills; it articulates different meanings of the word “reflect”—the literal and the abstract.

The City of Individuals

Two peas in a pod

What bonds us all and what we all have in common as humans is our range of complex emotions and how we communicate them to the world. We as humans can see another, a complete stranger, and have an instant understanding without uttering a word. We don’t have to speak the same language. The power of human empathy connects us in a way no other animal can relate to. We have a mutual connection with one another even when coming from different paths.

Anxiety

White Noise

Piano Man

1/1/1980 and 1/1/2020

Reclamation #18

Disparities

Ew, A Pig! 

Albright Hall

Ophelia

Untitled

Ophelia Series

Portrait of the Viewer

Portrait of the Viewer is an amazing combination of familiarity and the abstract. The manipulation of the human face is symbolic of the differing points of view that exist in every work of art. Each viewer can question their own beliefs and feel as though they are being morphed into a new version of themselves.

A Wrinkle in Time

Smoking Girl

This work uses surrealism to portray the beauty in the progression of time. Our actions have extreme consequences in our lives, even though they may seem meaningless, unconscious, or irrelevant. One innocuous breath led to a life of respiratory illness. One certain step caused the necessity of that knee replacement. One particular cigarette that was smoked on one certain day of a long life pushed the body to its limit, resulting in dire consequences. This work is a unique and striking representation of how important every single decision can be. Each small action can be the difference between life or death, whether we know it or not.

Coming Into My Color

This work depicts a form that we are all familiar with: the human body. The artist manipulates the coloring so as to represent a recurring theme in her life. Women have experienced an extended conflict with their own bodies. The author represents a symbolic "coloring" or acceptance of her own body.

Prayer for Little Hands

Thoughts and Prayers

Thoughts and Prayers relates to the violence faced by schoolchildren across America. While only one school is depicted, it could represent any institution in the country. The choice of medium was vital to the overall meaning of the work as the subject is able to be printed over and over, much like the feelings of Americans following each act of brutality, knowing that little to no action will take place. The cycle repeats each time another shooting occurs, a repetition much like the raising and lowering of the flag.

What hides behind the lies

Countdown

Countdown is an oil painting done in a muted color scheme, meant to show the change in the artist’s passion throughout life. The work is separated into five segments, each expressing a different love experienced by the artist. Time and objects are represented by the changing combinations of numbers. Other loves in the artist’s life are shown, with the depictions of a tunnel jet fan and clarinet. Each of these are linked under the idea of motion, which is artist’s most faithful love. The changing and unchanging loves in a person’s life is a familiar feeling to many.

TiGhT

Christmas

Frosted Greens

Nature

Views from the Jungle

Misplacement

Little Brother

A Bed’s Width Apart