In my large-scale charcoal drawings, a world is made by the intermingling of land, sea, and sky and depicts the fault-lines and threats of broad collective events. In counterpoint, the psychic pressure of these outside forces and their impact on daily life is held in balance. I use various sizes and shapes of torn paper and assemble them together, so the final drawing is oddly shaped and undulating—taking on a sculptural form. My process is at once additive, subtractive, and improvisational and mixes-up the actual and the illusionary. Through the careful blending of charcoal with delicate erasure, small discrete images ranging over expansive spaces weave together as an evolving narrative emerges as I draw. Informed by extensive reading and banks of images I’ve compiled over time, my work draws upon a variety of sources such as Buddhist teachings, contemporary fiction, news events, and poetry. In the current moment when our lives are defined more by shifting realities than some stable world, my work, with its flipped and twisted planes of torn paper and sutured-together fragments, discloses a new understanding of forces operating in the world through the lens of personal experience.


2022