Artist Statement

I am a mixed media painter based in New England.

My work bears witness to ecological trauma through combinations of scientific research with figurative, symbolic, and archival imagery. This work considers how data-based evidence, historical belief, and emotional response shape humanity’s complex relationship to the natural world.

I adapt pre-scientific conceptions about Nature as narrative frameworks for 21st century climate and environmental crises, using mythological archetypes to embody distress. I use gestural marks in wet and dry media to transform digital graphics of foreboding data into expressionistic symbols. I highlight the inaccessibility of technical writing through hand-written fragments from climate and environmental science research. These multi-layered elements examine the physical trauma of environmental disasters, the emotional trauma of eco-anxieties, and the cognitive trauma of overwhelming information.

The American Psychological Association describes eco-anxiety as “fear of environmental cataclysm from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change.” Acknowledgement of eco-anxieties, including ecological grief, can lead to positive action, proactive adaptation and resilience. My intent is to prompt connections among science, history and culture, and generate conversations about the multiple challenges that humanity, and all living entities, face.