My art reflects a close relationship with nature. I pursue my work with a humorous spirit, and I breathe life into these pieces using watercolor paint, pens, and paper.

 

Environmentalism and biological conservation are two veins that heavily define all of my work. The calming and protective qualities of nature are emphasized, with a harkening back to folkloric beliefs in the natural world and its deities. In varying sizes of media, from minuscule to large, these works render surrealist situations. With an illustrative flair, akin to a storybook, these paintings have a feeling of playfulness and oddity representative of the creativity eking out of the embattled mind of a student. With a reworking of classical forms, I often accept two dimensionality with an almost cartoonish quality, further emphasizing the playfulness and intention to achieve a sense of childlikeness. It is a brand of surrealism that takes itself even less seriously. Though my forms are not purely classical, there are clear references to classical techniques in rendering and setting. A greater closeness with nature and a freer, more humorous sense of self is presented as the antithesis to my mind from within the college environment.

 

My painting, “Gnome Laughing Matter,” is a perfect example of one of my works. I began with a blank page and drew directly, without sketching, with a pen. This watercolor and pen painting depicts a gnome village, one with mushroom houses sprouting from moss-covered logs and tree stumps. The gnomes’ scales are dramatically small, with a continuous, simple rendering that repeats across the figures. Diverse arrays of ferns grow across the scene, while multiple animal species, like snails, salamanders, lightning bugs, a cat, a dragonfly, a frog, a ladybug, a rolly-polly, a centipede, and a raccoon, live in harmony with the gnomes. The importance of ecological diversity is clearly stated here. Complementing the natural architecture of the gnome dwellings is a wall of stained glass that stretches across the background, featuring nature motifs.