The ultimate goal of my work is to explore the serene peace and unbridled joy that a life lived in nature can provide.
The ultimate goal of my work is to explore the serene peace and unbridled joy that a life lived in nature can provide.
ValU was the title of my Undergraduate Thesis show and the culmination of my years of study in Fine Art with a focus in Drawing.
With this body of work, I explored the connection between humans and nature by drawing visual parallels between the veins of the human eye to the shape of birds’ nests or by creating huge cut paper installations of inverted trees that echoed human lungs. I played with layers and created depth with sheets of translucent vellum. The floor length piece on vellum, took 6 months to complete and features incredibly delicate lines encircling the spaces of sky in a photograph of a tree. By isolating those parts, the negative space became positive and formed a sort of map. Viewers could lose themselves in the detail or step back to admire the simplicity of these pieces.
By working only in black and white and in various scales, both large and small, I wanted to create a conversation with my viewer around the real-world harmony of apparent opposites. I wanted to draw a line between the macrocosm of nature as a whole and the microcosm of our human body within that greater system.
I see now that this first major show was the first step down a path that has led me to my current body of work which, while more representational, also explores these concepts of duality, harmony, and seeming opposites through the use of black and white alone.
