A big part of who I am is being an empath. I aim to channel those feelings and emotions into the figures I draw or paint, hopefully reaching into my viewer’s empathetic side, and allowing them to feel my subject’s emotions with me. Normally, my art acts as an escape for me, but recently, I’ve started to use my personal experience with emotions, allowing me to work through them rather than avoid them.
The people in my life including family, friends, and loved ones fuel my concept that people’s states of being and emotions are ever-changing. I aim to capture the humanity of experiencing real and raw emotions, positive or negative. As my artistic exploration continues to grow and expand, I find myself always being drawn back to the subject of the figure.
I capture the essence of my subject and their emotional state of being in close up portrait paintings and charcoal drawings. My most recent trilogy of drawings explores this concept through the story of a woman’s shared experience and struggles in society. In my paintings, I use the background space to represent the environment’s effect on the figure as they flow into each other. These are done on canvas with thick, colorful impasto swirls, expressively capturing the fluidity of human emotion. This technique symbolizes that one’s state of being is constantly changing.