Bodily; suggestive and alluring. My work is comprised of abstract shapes and patterns. The imagery comes from a lexicon of figures that I began developing when I was briefly immobilized by an illness. Experiencing the physical limitations, I instinctively began to draw and abstract the shape of my own body to reconnect with it and to reclaim it. I now draw these forms automatically and obsessively. They morph and form into other configurations that deviate far from the figure but remain strangely and physically interrelated. In this manner they recapitulate.

While I often make overt references to breasts, belly, and pelvis; other times, I create things that resemble bones or organs; visceral and sinewy, swollen or emaciated. My forms are abnormal, riddled with bulbous protuberances, abject and grotesque. Despite their oddity, they are beautiful. Unexpected and sometimes disconcerting, the forms are not quite what they propose to be. They retain autonomy as they tease perfection with a pseudo-repetition and a bodily, imperfect, symmetry.

The empowerment of the forms is slightly contradicted by the overlying skeletal structures that often accompany them. These “cages” or “nets” entered my work when, on a quest for plain, utilitarian underwear, I was pulled into the abyss of online shopping. I am fascinated by over-the-top lingerie, which is both impractical and outlandish. I am intrigued by the way the fabric forces women’s bodies into geometric shapes, as if they are packaged into a smaller container.

The lingerie in my work feels more manufactured than the soft organic shapes beneath. Cage and body are influenced by one another as I draw them in conjunction. The forms maintain an independence as they seek to define the objects that confine them. The superimposed structures are restrictive as they delineate the space in which the underlying forms exist; they are also a decorative adornment, jewelry amplifying what lies beneath; laced in ribbons.

Recently these nets have begun to embed themselves in the forms. They are more organic, becoming veins, vascular systems, second bodies. Together the bodily forms and nets explore the societal decorum of feminine beauty, and the conflation of expression and repression that is installed within the female body. My work explores the tension between the biological and the psycho-social.

My work has also begun to bloom through installation. I use the multiplicity inherent in printmaking to create patterns out of the shapes I draw. Pattern is symbolic of repeated sensations and action; implying a repetitive nature to a depicted feeling. The expanding forms in my work create an enveloping structure that has a continuous effect upon its surroundings; an immersive experience that simultaneously seduces, entraps, and enraptures the viewer. While beautiful, the overwhelming amount of patterning has an insidious effect on the psychological state of the viewer: becoming oppressive. In this way the images take mastery over their beholder_, demanding attention, and refusing to go unnoticed despite the feminine being so often ignored.

Within the patterned backgrounds my individual works of art act as interruptions to the patterns. These defiant moments in conjunction with the structure of a repeat allows the work to embody the conflation of expression and repression that originally compelled me to draw the figure, and the paradox of liberation defined by bounds.