Encaustic mixed media. 2020
Isolation, the starvation for others, and the need for a long full body hug have driven me mad, but also driven me to think about how all our scars, experiences, and joys work together to create our "skin". "Forsaken" is the only representational piece and the first of a series entitled "Beneath the Skin" In "Forsaken" I was lead to consider all the ways in which women, in particular, have been isolated by society, not just a pandemic, but as the result of social norms and culture. How many ways have I been told to hold myself back, to be demure, to keep myself hidden? How many ways do we cage women? There is hope in "Forsaken" as you can feel the curtain sliding away and she is just about to escape.
Working alone, always alone has been excruciating. I thrive off of the give and take between artists, the amplification of ideas, all of us pulling "that" thread together. And for now, it's just me, inside my head, engaging in too much introspection. It's so easy, too easy to talk myself out of doing anything and so when I do finally latch onto that spidery wisp of an idea I am more covetous than ever of that space.