My Most Recent Artist Statement

This is my most recent copy of my Artist Statement. Feedback is always appreciated about the statement and the title. "Quiet Conflict" is my Senior Thesis Exhibition. It opens April 1st, 7-10pm at the Hungerford building located on the corner of Goodman and Main.

Quiet Conflict explores my frustration and, consequently, the defense mechanisms I have developed to maintain a positive view of society, while focusing on the fragility of character. People are unbalanced, malleable, and contradictory. They are twisted and warped, but maintain the delicate and cherished qualities of personality. While beautiful, they are contorted by their environment.

I try not to see people in a negative light, but the situations they’ve experienced as mediators of who they have become. Unfortunately, people have selfish tendencies and take comfort in their confined perspective of the world. This fills society with conflict, pain, and tragedy that we put upon ourselves. This is a perspective that I struggle with everyday. As a student of psychology, I use predisposition, aversive environments and psychopathology to pardon people of blame. In doing so I explain away the awful actions of both myself and everyone else.

My images are created with a collection of dyed paper, pen, paint, and thread. I use abstract figurative forms to cultivate the nostalgic confusion that society provokes. The handwriting represents my personal process of reaffirmation by repeating phrases on paper that I replay in my mind. The thread is a controlled medium that attempts to bind and control, with limited success, while the paper is subject to the whim of wine, tea, and bleeding ink. Together these represent my internal conflict and struggle to understand, appreciate, and maintain faith in myself and others.