I make acrylic paintings of self portraits and imagined landscapes that investigate the concept of self identity in relation to the body, the environment, and social interaction. In addition, I experiment with celestial landscapes, color field paintings, and audiovisual works that question the range of human knowledge, ability, and perception. Drawing on my formal education of Psychology and Neuroscience, I seek to visualize abstract concepts such as memory, decision-making, cognition, perceptual processing, and the self.
In my self portraits, I create a narrative centered around the mind-body interaction. I use grotesque, altered, blurred, or transformed facial expressions and structures to elicit feelings of frustration, hyperawareness, and depersonalization in regard to one’s own body and sense of self. As I add texture to the canvas, I often relinquish control of how or where the paint leaves my brush, knife, or fingertip, mimicking the philosophy of predeterminism, or how much free will or control we truly have over our lives or the lives of others. Within my portraits, I simulate the infinite intricacy of the human skin and biology, pointing towards the microscopic environment that is essential yet imperceptible in our lives. Identity adapts to the situation and changes over time, and my paintings explore this dynamic nature of identity in the context of natural and social environments.
In my imagined landscapes, I visualize self identity in relation to the natural environment. As I create imagined landscapes, I find solace in creating novel and stylistic interpretations of nature, yet my use of oversaturated or unlikely colors gives the scenes an undertone of unfamiliarity and impossibility, alluding to an alternative form of the natural world untarnished by mankind. These paintings explore the relationship between the self and the environment by imagining novel experiences in nature as an prominent component of self identity. Simultaneously, my imagined landscapes decidedly pay homage to the style of the prolific Bob Ross, creating a meta-commentary on this recognizable style of landscape painting within the art world. I place these imagined landscapes within fragmented collages of images, symbols, and icons to represent how external influences shape our sense of self.
As I look forward, I seek to expand on the interactions between self identity, the body, and the environment by altering the visual proximities of my representations. Our identities are inseparable from our physical form, yet we are able to experience depersonalization in moments of intense meditation or dissociation, catching a glimpse of the mind untethered. As I explore this mind-body interaction within the context of nature and society, I create visual fields and networks of interactions and associations, both intentional and accidental, that echo both neural activity and the entropic nature of the universe.