Artist Statement

I have been influenced by many different aspects of my life -- my family, visual culture and other artists’ work, my personal experiences as a woman, and a mother.  Although I have primarily worked with photography and digital art, I also have a profound love for painting and sculpture and have been exploring these media on a deeper level more recently.  My work since a very young age has always been people centered, as the human condition and narrative has been the most fascinating to me.

 The theme of identity as it relates to my own personal experience as well as on a deeper, more universal level, has always been present in my artwork.  I have often used myself as the subject in my projects, such as the series “Picked Apart,” and the Untitled self-portrait series. 

I have always had a passion for people, and my work as a wedding photographer has been a large influence on my life.  More than just documenting other people’s “big day,” weddings have become a source of inspiration for me as a female, entrepreneur, and artist, as I deal with explorations of gender roles in society, and cultural and psychological anthropology.  Telling a narrative about a group of people in a photojournalistic way, these visual stories become short biographies of tradition, religion, and ritual, combined with human relationships and experiences.  They are at once unique and universal, and often portray every single human emotion in a very short period of time.  A few selected works display aspects of love, sadness, anxiety, and joy.

I have also explored my role as a female in society as a mother and have created works based on other subjects that tie in to who I am and my own experiences.  The series “Pong for Atari” is based on the constant back and forth in the mind of a mother.  At first, seemingly simplistic, upon closer inspection, this work is actually much more complex.  Constant movement, calculation, and strategic misdirection keep the “ball” from veering off course. I have also drawn and painted several portraits of my children, based on moments that both convey their personalities, but also combine a narrative of my interactions with them and the universal experience of motherhood. 

 At times representational and other times abstract, my artwork has always related to my passion for people, and explored the themes of love, identity, psychological anthropology and universality. Through these narratives I have been able to visually express my own feelings and experiences to communicate and connect to those of others.