Artist Statement

I am a trans mixed-media painter who uses handmade paper, textiles, paper-mache, assemblage, and costume-making to transmute my reality vulnerably and truthfully. My studio is a desire-seeking crucible: my paintings are relational beings which remain tethered to whims. They beckon, repulse, mimic, and decay. As surfaces are rearranged and undergo metamorphosis, they are constantly subjected to new encounters and ecologies. This process of forming images and meaning only to be ripped apart exudes queer malleability. My twisting works contain symbology drawn from nature, fantasy, found and gifted objects, and personal experiences. Papermaking and paper-mache are highly malleable processes, producing surfaces with endlessly transformative properties. I evoke hybrid and mutant beings as sources of powerful queer kinship. I work with abstraction as a protective guise against surveillance, a tool for evading categorization and capture. Whether it is through bodily transformation or narrative shifting, the act of alteration allows for new forms of empowerment. My artistic process leans heavily on intuitively exploring and finding connections between surfaces and my surroundings. I find purpose in moving across disciplines and expanding the material breadth of my practice. My work expands to fill the space it is offered, fitting the shape of its container like a liquid. Similarly, individual pieces are rarely discreet, with a single work tending to contain a constellation of components, its meaning formed through their relationships and the activated space among them.