As an emerging female artist, my personal research revolves around contemporary figurative work that is aesthetically rooted in ancient Greek vase painting, which idolized timeless beauty through the perfection of human form and perceptual idealism. Perfection, in ancient Greece, rested in those who attained the ideal balance of mind and body. These figures were regarded as divinely gifted and became a prototype for mortality.

 

Drawing from recent personal medical experiences, I decided to explore the relationship of mind and body under the influence of a traumatic experience to understand how these entities interact with each other and determine how they forge identity. This struggling body is meant to challenge the aesthetics of idealism and the conventional norms of beauty by projecting an interpretation of a fragile physical and mental interior masked with the opposing youthful and inherently strong, beautiful, unscarred exterior to convey the illusion of appearance. The gestures of various figures interacting represent physical and mental ideas of myself creating a narrative of struggle and denial of a broken self-esteem, moments of struggle of rebuilding, and the acceptance of the rebirth of a new self. Drawing has always been my preferred medium for it affords a different type of freedom in terms of scale and allows for interesting elongations to occur during the creative process.

 

My most recent work is a conglomeration of three styles of artwork: collage, printmaking, and charcoal drawing. Collage allows me to explore the physicality of layering various materials to create a three-dimensional textured surface, delineate a perimeter that breaks outside of the classic rectangle, and expand in scale. Printmaking serves as a unifying language that conceals the figures and speaks on inner and external identity. Charcoal and pastel is ideally suited to my approach due to their transient physicality, reflecting motion, change, and impermanent transformation; there is a sense of history within this medium, remembering every mark, erasure, overlap, and blur.

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"118th Annual Student Exhibition" at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Gallery

(May 10 - June 2, 2019)

https://www.pafa.org/museum/exhibitions/118th-annual-student-exhibition