statement

The figures in my paintings offer themselves to be felt; their vulnerability as flesh is bared and opened. Orifices and protuberances create sites at which the skin outside meets with the skin inside, forming a continuous passage between the two that eradicates their distinct positions. These grotesques become border creatures, defined by indeterminate boundaries that merge, overflow, and extend into the surrounding landscape. Despite their potentially alienating monstrosity, these characters strive to connect with each other and their environment. Their acts of singing, loving, whistling, stargazing, and wandering suggest attempts to become united with their surroundings through a state of perpetual wonder. As these characters achieve such unity, the world that opens itself to them is one full of growth and decay, shifting and transforming with their every extension. My work shows death as integral to the world of these border creatures. Rather than celebrating death itself, however, I seek to make bearable a recognition of its deep connection to life. It is in this hope that I offer an exploration of the body as open, vulnerable, and on the threshold of boundlessness.

bio

born: 1988, Georgia

education

University of Georgia, BFA, 2010
Washington University in St. Louis, MFA, 2012

selected awards/honors

The Desert Space Foundation Award, Washington University in St. Louis, 2012

selected publications

Direct Art Magazine; volume 19. New York, NY: Slowart Productions, 2012

selected group shows

Kemper Museum of Art: MFA Thesis Exhibition, St. Louis, Mo, 2012
Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago: Human: A Celebration of the Human Form, Chicago, IL, 2012
Zhou Brothers Arts Center: Wet Paint: National Juried Painting Exhibition, Chicago, IL, 2012
Des Lee Gallery: Parabola, St. Louis, MO, 2010