Art is Personal

It’s not how many times you fall

but how many times you rise and keep going

And you, my dear, are resilience personified.

And each day walk with your head held high.

Because you. are. woman.

And love is you.

And I love you.

My work has always been a love letter to the resilience of women. We are viewed as emotional beings. Expressive. “Dramatic”. Perceived as weak, our tears have meant the absence of strength. I’ve never accepted that as our truth. I know how much power it takes to feel what you’re feeling and let it live in your body. To hold your hurt. I know how much struggle and jagged edges we endure in order to become soft. There’s so much beauty and vigor in the breakdown. That’s what I aim to capture in every piece that I create.

Growing up I didn’t have access to my voice. I had a daily front row seat to violence. I didn't know it was ok to speak up. As a self-taught artist, creating has been my way of paving space for pain, and capturing moments where I’ve felt small and broken. I often depict women that are crying, but they are holding their head high. Their stance is strong because their pain has not broken them. I aim to give a voice to women who have felt silenced. 

No matter how individualized you think your story is, there’s someone, from another part of the world, who will see it and see themselves. That’s why I create in collage. So many pieces of paper, from dozens of different bodies, go into creating one image. One being who holds so many. Piece by piece I cut. Piece by piece I glue down. Piece by piece I tell my/your/their story. The second I start work on a new collage I know what the end result will look like. It’s usually an image that’s been ruminating in my mind for quite some time. My artistic process is not about the journey of discovery, but rather piecing together a puzzle that already exists. It’s just a matter of placing the right pieces in the perfect places.

I think the best art is the art that's hard to make. It's the painting that makes you cry at 3am. The poem that forces you to relive your toughest challenges. It digs deep. It begs for honesty. It exposes you to parts of yourself you didn't know existed, or have spent several lifetimes silencing. It claws, pulls, and scratches the most beautiful cuts into your skin, so deep its healing.