Layers of Being

In my recent work, I explore how the details of nature instinctively pull out the imagination, recording both the subject and the impression our mind projects. During a residency in Ireland, I started a series of paper cut outs focused on subjects being formed from different biological elements. They are based on the landscape and its textures along with studies from a microscope. I oscillated between three perspectives, the way the environment seemed on the outside, the memories and experiences I impressed onto it, and the world as it is to the subject, with microscopic organisms existing at a level entirely their own yet always in secret symbiosis with us.

I gravitate towards paper and drawing as media for this body of work due to its adaptive quality. Paper can be ephemeral or coveted, flat or sculpted, a place for a quick idea or foundational text.  Depending on the attention given to it, paper can be elevated from something quickly discarded into a meditative object. In this way, it's similar to the subjects I work with, often overlooked in favor of ones with more body like paint on canvas, yet there is an endless refuse of paper floating ambiently around us.

I never know exactly what a piece will look like at the end. How the parts fit together is gradually revealed through the process. Pieces will suddenly speak to each other in ways I didn't initially intend which has been surprising and freeing. This transformative element makes creating the work exciting to me as it grows out like the organic forms they seek to depict, always strange yet seeming to follow their own hidden order.