Existing at the confluences of physiology, culture, and internal reflections, art is a relic of the self, of felt experience. My work as a whole revolves around the boundaries of the body, of the self. Through my sculptural practice, I have explored the ramifications of bodies coming into contact, of selves colliding. In painting, I am attempting to find and depict the roles that various forms of language, including painting itself, can have in defining and projecting the boundaries of a self.
My experience in my body has never been static. My struggles with coordinating my physical and internal senses of self began as a child due to physical disabilities and struggles with obesity, which I have largely overcome and are now invisible. Entering into the current era, where the self is projected through intangible frequencies, able to be broadcasted and dissected further into more discreet pieces than ever before, has only furthered my interest in the role that technology and representational effects have in expanding and defining the boundaries of the self.
The mediums I choose to use are narrative elements in my exploration. In sculpture, this has often taken the form of sound and materials that embody a portion of the self. I have recently been using Solo cups as a recurring form. Their suggestion of social interaction, moments of growth or becoming, and the confusion or inebriation often requisite in these moments makes them a potent sign in presenting discourse around the topic of the self. The cultural specificity of their associations is a simultaneous reminder of the narratives we tell that mediate the process of becoming and feeling our selves. The sculpture’s reactivity, or interactivity, is a depiction of my personal ontological views that the only way of becoming a self-aware subject is through objectification or interruption of the self’s autonomy. In this manner, the limits and failures of our ability to fully project an internal self onto external realities become the moments that allow us to become truly agential, to be aware of ourselves and our powers in mediating these realities.
My paintings take a less literal approach to exploring the boundaries of the self. Painting itself is one of these boundaries. A painting is simultaneously both an invitation to explore further and an imposed barrier, dimensionally limiting another’s ability to peer into the being of the artist. An artwork does not need to have the intention of depicting interiority or an artist’s reflections on social or physical reality for it to still be a relic of the self. In some capacity, an artwork will always hold our physicality, internality, and social contexts within itself. Here again, the mediums I incorporate into my works are all representative of discrete aspects that together work to synthesize a being.
Conveying a sensation through my work is not my primary goal, at least not in the way it is conventionally phrased—as the artist's outcry to be understood, to have someone feel like they do. I do not think it is possible to convey any specific sensation due to my views on the self and the limitations of projecting felt experience through the various matrices of individual and collective existence. This does mean that much of my work is analytical, though it often includes imagery or components that are reflective or cause sensation in me. I repurpose old images from my personal archive, rediscovered after years. These photos often evoke a bittersweet feeling of fleeting moments slipping away. Nostalgia is perhaps the most individual of emotions, as the objects and memories that cause them are specific to every individual's experience. Using 3D modeling software and Photoshop, I transform these images into the walls and furniture of interior spaces. The objects contextualize other forms within my work, blending physical and mental realms. These images and emotions become vehicles within the painting, onto which the rest of the components can hitch a ride.
When text appears in my work, it represents attempts to directly express a personal sensation through any of the mediums of self-projection that we have. I choose the text to in some way match the image it overlays, striving to convey the feeling evoked by the image. The challenges of capturing subjective experiences through words are reflected in the way the text reintegrates into the visual world through 3D extrusion or introduction into the scene.
I incorporate default shapes found in archived versions of Photoshop. They stand as symbols of the social world—hollow until shaped by personal experience. The foreignness of these generic forms makes it difficult to attach personal emotional or symbolic significance, yet they possess an enigmatic emotive quality emerging from their appeal to the general, allowing our minds to fill in the gaps. They serve as representatives of language’s attempts at being a universal form through which experience can be directly manifest. The mutation of these forms is an erosion of their meaning, and their imposition over imagery shows the power of language to limit the conveying of personal sensation.
Crayon has also become a recurring medium in my work, as it invokes the presence of a physical body. The tangibility of this medium highlights the component of shared physical existence that bonds our realities. As a child, before we have our minds or our feelings, we have our bodies. The cultural specificity of crayon’s role as a childhood staple underscores the fleeting nature of any medium that attempts to convey personal sensation. It is a metaphor for painting itself, whose time and place may come and go, and whose role as a mediator of the self is only a result of its current social and historical context.