About

Self Portrait, 2018

Self Portrait, 2018

 
 

I think my work represents randomness, what is circumstantial. The body, death, emotions, the things we can’t choose and our attempts to control and put order to events.

Historically, I’ve been primarily a sound artist. In 2016 however I started to get very ill - after many strokes, a heart attack, and multiple organ failure, I was diagnosed with late stage lyme disease & coinfections. I’ve grappled with a limited capacity of my senses and my physical body since, and had to turn away from performing all together due to light and sound sensitivity and limited lung capacity. I’ve turned toward painting as a studio practice, and tattooing as a connective & intuitive practice. I’ve been focusing on ways to integrate my studio painting practice and bodily painting practice, by painting designs onto the skin with gentian violet in automatic process that results in a unique piece that is part of a growing visual language and bodily history.

After almost two decades working in the sex trades, I’m visually influenced by the aesthetics of erotic labor, BDSM & sex worker culture. Acrylic nails, latex, lingerie, Pleasers, glitter, shimmer, neons, butterflies, cherubs, animal prints, gloss. Illusions of sexual opulence, femininity and luxury maintained with a solidity of self that is unknowable underneath. I layer materials and pigments intuitively, and encase them in resin - making a veneer that obscures the image through reflection - much like erotic labor itself.

The way I make my images is through boundary making and a sort of collaboration with materials. This started out as a coping mechanism for mental health, like a visual ASMR practice - and has branched into larger image making and layering with more and more material experimentation. I create borders with tape, flexible metal, acrylic panel, silicone, wood, sheet metal and pour materials like beeswax, resin, caulk or mortar, acrylic mediums which creates a textured area to pour water with different types of pigments, chemicals & other interactives in order to slowly build the layers of a composition. I often work symmetrically, so that each differentiation is more easily exposed, the expressiveness of the materials more apparent. The composition is a mix of circumstance and direction, intention and observation, reaction and response.