ARTIST STATEMENT

Is abundance the American dream? Is to have more to be more? We often display our happiness, our ability, and our internal state through achievement and external properties. While drive, innate self-motivation, can build empires and spawn innovation, it does not guarantee contentment.

In 2020, an unimaginable and unseen force swept the globe with fear, isolation, and death. Families and individuals were forced to lose many things: contact with their loved ones, a sense of normalcy, financial stability, and more. Through this loss, however, we have seen many phoenixes rise from the ashes. Even with the persistent looming cloud of COVID-19, a new sense of purpose and paradigm of values can be found. 

Without the ability to look outward for personal gain, growth, and happiness, we must look inward. This introspection is not in the hopes of yielding self-sufficiency—but the contrary. It is meant to produce surrender. I am powerless over the pandemic. In fact, I am powerless over most things. What remains after stripping all external properties is our unique and concurrent common connection to a higher power. 

Whether it be God, Mother Nature, art, or love—the sense of relying on something unseen in the wake of loss, in our blank void, brings about peace and new gain. We find ourselves winning by losing.

Our Unlucky Skin

The woman portrayed in this acrylic painting on canvas depicts coexistence of pain and well-being. In her face, we see shadows cast by blemishes, ripples, and scars hidden under a veil of gold. Surrounded by darkness (created with a collage of screenprinted willow leaf Thai paper and pearlescent mulberry paper), she tilts her head towards the sky. The balance of positive and negative space (her body draped in white, representing the absence of physical matter and presence of light) in the work emits a meditative state. This is complemented through her neutral expression.

Even with a history of pain and loss, she proves resilient. Is she better for it? Did she choose this path? Or do those questions even matter. Instead, what matters, in this state, is that we recognize her stillness and contentment with all that has been done and all that is to come. Because, her “unlucky skin” does not belong just to her—it’s “ours”. The halo suspended over the tip of her dome reminds her that everything we have, or do not have, is shared. These scars are external but this skin is god-given.

And we find peace in that.

With this disposition of winning by losing, how can we make a positive impact on the people around us in the way that we live and create our art?

Art is a gift that chooses its creator and is accessible to anyone who is open to it. It is shared. 

In my daily practice and mental state, I find that I must surrender control in order to gain serenity—gain by loss. More literally, I have chosen to leave a financially stable career path in order to honor the life that was given to me—as a mother, a wife, and creator—in exchange for contentment and righteousness. Gain by loss. 

The positive opportunities and connections that have presented themself to me since making this decision extend beyond a horizon I can see. And the response I’ve been given is one of love, shared inspiration, and fearlessness. Art is a life of beauty as a byproduct of beauty itself.