Artist's Statement

My imagery is invented, yet informed by art history and memory. I work without preliminary sketches or preconceived ideas, instead finding the image through the painting process itself. I look for images that feel familiar—like they have lived in humanity a long time, yet endure because our emotional palette remains unchanged. In recent works, I tap into my experiences growing up on a tree farm in rural South Carolina to explore people’s relationships to land, history, and family mythologies through the lens of the Southern Gothic. Other interests include the grim or awkward realities of embodied existence and those routine, relatable actions like walking, sleeping, or falling down.