Date of Submission

Spring 2022

Academic Program

Studio Arts

Project Advisor 1

Daniella Dooling

Abstract/Artist's Statement

We are nature, and nature is everything. Our bodies reflect the patterns found in nature—our veins and cells mimic lichen and mold, roots, water, vines.

Painting does not require a message. It is independent of me, the artist; it stands on its own, a child made by my hand. It is sent out into the world alone, unaccompanied by my touch or comment, its only task to procure a visual experience, a collaboration between geometry and gesture, for those whose eyes rest upon it.

The mind is drawn to nature; we are endowed with the ability to connect our selves and experiences to the world we are a part of. To make a connection between art and nature is to remember our roots.

This work is a process. It is a series of events, each essential to and impossible without the other. Time is a moving force, within nature and within me—propelling evolution and erosion while the earth grows, morphs, expands, augments. This metamorphosis mirrors my artistic practice: we are products of our experiences, the places we go and people we love are ingrained within the layers of our skin like data within annual rings of tree growth. We internalize and project these experiences, whether conscious or not, and this work is their reflection.

Cotton is of the earth; canvas, thread, cloth, wood, paint, and water as well. I want you to see the nature in all of it—that we are and everything we create is nature. We—and everything we create—are reflections of nature, and it is in our nature as artists to replicate it.

I do not seek to disguise mimetic efforts as anything other than what they are, for doing so implies that a painting is anything more than a single plane—which is actually it's most unique quality. Multi-dimensionality in painting is a facade, and to execute it successfully my viewer must be tempted to believe it.

I use imitation to honor nature, to bring it into spaces meant to be void. Cheesecloth in itself is first an imitation of grids: leaf veins, cells. Then stretched with my hands to imitate erosion, skeletons, waterways, built-up sediment. However, it is also completely separated from nature in its creation: cotton harvested by machines, processed by machines, assembled and distributed by machines. To bring it into an organic conversation is to bring it back to its origin: a collection of cells, a product of pollination, a gift from the ground.

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Open Access

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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