Artist Statement

Before I could even hold a pencil, my love for art came first from a love of storytelling and make-believe. My toys, stuffed animals, and dolls had complex background stories. Through creating scenes and full-fledged environments, they acted out intricate and detailed storylines that gave me a world to escape into. Many of my influences stem from a childhood that I consider rooted in a golden era of children’s media; movies, tv shows, books, and games. Characters, colors, and places that were fantastical but as a young girl felt real and like something to aspire to and recreate.

My photographs are composed using a narrative style with themes of identity, grief, and memory. Through stories and vignettes, I examine my experiences of girlhood, the weight of relationships, and the objects and moments that have shaped my identity. Using self-portraiture, familiar childhood items, like dolls, and spaces I create staged self-portraits or still-lifes. I often fixate on ordinary details that others may overlook, surrounding myself in moments of longing and overanalyzing in an effort to unpack complex feelings and experiences. 

Tightly cropping the images allows me to shape the viewer’s focus, offering only fragments, like a narrator revealing glimpses of a larger, more complex story. Color is equally intentional within my work, manipulated and saturated to heighten sensations of nostalgia. I am inspired by media that uses color to nonverbally clue into underlying notions or assumptions within a storyline. Through sharing these narratives, I evoke senses of familiarity that waver between comfort and an unsettling notion of remembrance.