Artist Statement
Being immersed in an environment changes everything. My drawings originate from, and are profoundly influenced by, the physical spaces I inhabit during their making. I use materials - ink, charcoal, graphite, watercolor, wax - that can be layered and manipulated, with each mark echoing the surfaces and forms I have seen or touched. My drawings are structures on paper that seek to capture the history and physicality of the built forms I encounter, while evoking living, natural, systems. In and out of the studio, I am driven to explore the relationships between the bodily activity of drawing and our interpretation of organic systems and phenomena. Currently, I combine visual elements from the natural and built environments, dedicating attention to elements of biology, geology, and architecture.
I believe that the act of drawing is a way of residing in multiple states of awareness – of present, past, future – of what one is, has been, and hopes to become – of the physical, the mental, and the formal. I draw as a way to see more deeply, both inside and out, and to elevate the act of seeing to a process that is fully engaging of both body and mind. In the gesture of a drawing, there abides the question of how human beings hold memory. I care about how the body holds its history, and how that history can be performed through the act of making embodied signs. As my practice bridges the concerns of traditional markmaking, new media, and the visual cultures of science, I seek to discover ways in which drawing operates as a site of trans-disciplinary inquiry.
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Authored Publications
The Melangui, ISBN 0996820604, www.melangui.com, 2015.
“Guest Editorial.” Jasper Magazine, Volume 2, Number 4, Muddy Ford Press, (Columbia, SC: 2013): 63.
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