Artist Statement

My principal aim with this series is to capture the overwhelm of trying to be a good person in today’s world. During my medical training, we were taught that the brain has access to an unimaginable amount of information, but must make decisions about what to perceive, pay attention to and remember. The majority of information we have access to is disregarded or omitted to allow us to stay attentive to the things that matter. In order to make sense of the world we are undergoing an unending filtering of information.

Now in our post digital age, the abundance of information we are confronted with daily demands we refilter on a secondary level, leading many of us to a state of perpetual burnout. We are drowning in data, often without the proper knowledge to interpret or filter it. This heightened state of angst can turn an experience as simple as enjoying a piece of fruit into a spiral of calorie counts, farming practices, and carbon footprints. Each of these considerations bears a cost for its subject, and it is this cost I aim to explore through my portraiture.

Using personal and archival images overlaying mixed media, mostly sourced from the foundational textbooks of my medical education, I try to emulate my experience viewing the world as an artist, a physician and a femme person. 

Works explore themes such as the witnessing of atrocities through social media, the paradoxical relationship femme people have with nourishment and food, and loss of innocence with puberty. The images are rendered on pillowcases, intimate items traditionally managed and maintained by women, essential and yet rarely examined. In overlaying the chaos of informational text with expressive paint and pastel, perhaps I can turn the volume down on the cacophony in our head and allow for a moment to be appreciated for its emotional truth.