STATEMENT OF WORK

I have had a recurring nightmare for the last 15-20 years. I encounter what I know to be a makeshift aquarium (usually a container with capacity to hold water—Tupperware in refrigerators, a humidifier in a closet) or a scene that is water-deficient. Each scenario would present terminally ill fish or other marine animals living inside these containers. In the first 7 years of this dream, someone would appear to tell me that it was my negligence that had caused it. After those 7 years, no one would arrive but I tacitly knew it had been my responsiblity. Every time I was horrified at the realization that I had caused such suffering, even if I did not know that the fish belonged to me. 

Death is always imminent for the creatures in these scenes—they are starving because I forgot to feed them, swimming sideways at the bottom, or barely moving in the tank, intoxicated by their own waste. I have periods of time when I pause my art practice, and it was only when I reengaged with my practice and began making work again that the nightmares began to fade, with these themes shifting from violent neglect to gentle absurdity. Without a clear understanding of what the ghost fish were trying to tell me, they became the topic I undertook in my work, knowing that they were somehow revelatory about the world around me and my own psyche.

I am intrigued by the contradiction in our concept of nature—how it holds jurisdiction over the future of humanity while remaining vulnerable to our exploitation of it as a resource. Through still life and surreal non-human portraiture, I am thinking through human intervention into the natural world and the dark—and sometimes unconscious—reverberations of our actions. I am exploring themes of the violence in negligence of the self in connection with others, immigration and life in Mexico while facing futures of global uncertainty. My work often incorporates murmurs of bright pointillistic color selectively mapping their way onto surreal scenes, suggesting hopeful vibrations in otherwise woeful environments.  

The writings of Byung Chul Han, Edward O. Wilson, Donna Haraway, poet Joy Harjo and Goethe’s ideas on “delicate empiricism” have influenced my work, as have the work of artists including Francisco Goya, Ken Price, Jean Dubuffet, Sidney Nolan, Beatriz Gonzalez, Rufino Tamayo, Dorothea Tanning, Fischli & Weiss, Mike Kelley—most anything that feels like it tries to laugh through a broken heart.