EXHIBITION STATEMENT

Creating art is a transformative experience for me. Every bit of artwork that I apply myself to has a story, a song, or an emotional component to it that I put into visual form. Everything around me can inspire emotions or imagination within me.
Materials do not bind me by their rules and experimentation is essential to learning a medium. Feeling the smoothness of the paper or the ridges of a canvas in my hands makes me feel connected to everything that I work on. Ink is a medium that instills great joy in me. It is very malleable, as ink can be controlled by using a brush or pen and it can be less controlled by letting it flow wherever it wants to. A mixture of the two forms is very harmonious and it’s hard to find that balance.
I come from a very existential but human point of view. We are the universe and it exists in all of us. Art can be a gateway to bring people together but also a way to learn about yourself as well. It's all interconnected; just like the body, mind, and soul. This is why my pursuits in art therapy and becoming my own artist cannot be separated. Everything that I've gone through and strived for is in my artwork. It spills out onto the page and to take those experiences out would make the piece soulless.
Two of the pieces that I have in the gallery is “Building a Body #1” and “Building a Body #2.” They are important pieces to me and express the idea of recreating yourself within the role of the universe. Existentialism is the idea that human beings can define their own existence, but within the context of real life, it can be a messy process. Even when a person thinks that they have a handle on their life, it can easily slip out of their control due to outside forces. Both pieces use a mixture of controlled and free flowing ink to show this.
The process of making art, and not just looking at art, is a powerful way to express oneself. Art has been an instinctively powerful way for me to not only make my own life whole, but it also helps me link with a broader community around me. In the piece “Hand of Illumination,” the idea behind it is that helping hands are the gateway to life. They are used to help people, to build, to create, but to also let people learn how to help themselves. I use hand imagery a lot in my personal artwork due to that fact alone. On the flipside, hands can also be used to hurt and harm others. There can never be good without bad, unfortunately, but there is always a hope for the good to outweigh the bad in the world.