ARTWORK

Photography

Prior to entering university, I thought that I might pursue a career in psychology. It was a career track that I not only found interesting but also helpful and beneficial to the lives of others. This changed when I was 16 and diagnosed with a brain tumour. This made me question my mortality and it was then that I decided I wanted to live doing things that I specifically enjoy, while also creating meaningful experiences and products for others. This is when I began to take up photography and art-making in a professional sense. 

Ever since I was young, I have felt comfortable exploring past my backyard and have been able to use this comfort to expand my view of the world to see places throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. As I travelled, I began to experience all of the beauty that came from different cultures as well as different geographical and natural phenomenons. Capturing these scenes that I discovered then allowed me to expand my photographic techniques as the subject matter I sought out was consistently beautiful beyond my lens. 

As I travelled, I made a point to establish connections and involve the people that I saw into my artwork. This is their land, their culture and I was just borrowing it for my photography.

Paintings

A few years ago, through the loss of my vision, my doctors found a tumour. I had surgery and radiotherapy, which successfully dealt with the benign tumour, relieved the pressure to my optic nerves and restored my vision. I have found that painting is a way of communicating life-altering experiences. My relationship with this medium is dynamic and ever-changing.  A painting that makes sense at one point, will make no sense at another, and a painting which “speaks” to one observer might fall flat for another.

When a viewer tells me that my work really speaks to them, it causes me to question what they mean. The conclusion I have reached is that there is a subconscious connection between what I am able to express on canvas and what the viewers feel when they see it.

My work serves in this way as a visual prompt for a journey of the mind. One may experience many emotions along the journey and many might reach different destinations — I just provide the materials. When I begin, I’m not trying to reach a particular final product, there is no set predestination in my work. Each stroke on the canvas arises from the one before, as my professor used to say, “eventually, the painting will find itself.”

Experimental Films

The following three videos exist in a collection based on different autobiographical aspects of my life. Although at times dramatized and fabricated, they are founded on my personal experience.

Each work leaves ample room for projection from the audience. There is a place in each of the videos for the observer to insert themselves and find their own meaning as it relates to their personal life. My goal is to turn my own struggles and experiences into universal experiences that others face in their own lives.

Sculptures

When I was at Bowdoin College, I experimented with abstract forms of sculpture. I worked with styrofoam, glue and acrylic paint to create 3D elements that I was searching for in my abstract paintings. The sculptures began a dialogue that influenced further exploration into the possibilities of abstraction.