Why I do it
When I was four years old, my mother made a deal with me that I wouldn't have to go to my daycare anymore if I would entertain myself quietly in the back room at her beauty salon. The daycare was pretty bad, so I gladly started drawing people and animals to keep myself company instead.
Then a number of years ago I ran across a book that I hadn't seen since I was four. The story brought back a clear sense of how as a four-year-old I had tried on fables and stories almost like suits of clothes in an attempt to place myself in the world. I realized that one of the first places we learn to define ourselves and our worlds is in these childhood stories, both the ones from books and the ones we are told by our families, our cultures, and our society.
It's surprising how often people don't know what story they're living by (myself included). Today my work explores my fascination with how we relate to the stories in our lives and how we are impacted by those stories.
In my paintings, I create characters in symbolic environments suggestive of children's stories, using them to question our relationship with those narrative worlds. In my print series, Primer, I deal with narrative more literally, layering text from nursery rhymes and contemporary news articles to reveal common themes and questions running through these two very disparate forms of storytelling. And in my public art project and installation, Fear Not, I create an anti-fear environment in multiple media and give people the opportunity to be involved in creating that environment.