2020 - 2021 Work and Artist’s Statement

My recent work is concerned with recording, explaining, and presenting objective biology through the subjective filter of my artistic perspective. As a student, I am exploring the fields of both visual arts and ecological biology. This body of work represents the beginning of what I imagine will be a lifetime merger of these two fields. I aim to accurately depict and deliver information about my subject matter, while maintaining that it is art and not something out of a textbook or museum diorama. To me, the difference between art and a diorama is similar to the difference between the words extraordinary and ordinary. When you really think about the two words, you realize that extraordinary just means something that has moved past itself to become more. While, in my estimations, museum dioramas aim to depict an organism exactly how it was for educational purposes– I want to produce something more, but that still maintains its biological identity. When I say more, I could mean more color, more stylization, more emphasis on the aspects that I find beautiful and captivating. I suppose the “more” is the piece of myself most visible in my often objective subject matter. But the “more-ness” doesn’t necessarily come from inside of me, it comes from the world around me, changing how I view everything I encounter, and in turn affecting my art. A delicate pattern on the back of a beetle shell here, the indescribably deep shades of blue, green, grey, and purple in a storm cloud there – there is extraordinariness in everything nature has produced. And it’s all at risk! Humans are draining the magic from the land as assuredly as if we stuck a straw into it. I want people to see what we are ruining, see the more in the non-human kin around us. I accomplish this primarily through my use of color, which is often supersaturated. The vivid colors of my pieces are doing their best to reflect the hues present in everyday life that go unnoticed by most. I want to emphasize the beauty of these colors and forms that is in part what made me so passionate about the environment to begin with. I most often use oil paints and colored pencil to produce the rich colors I want to relay in my work. My hope is that if more people learn to notice how exquisite the natural world around them is, that they will be more willing to go out of their way to care for it.