Witnesser

This series of paintings and drawings attempts to navigate personal and pandemic tragedy via the depiction of trauma as a collective experience. Within my work, publically accessible images of oil spills, human induced wild-fires, decomposing mental wards, nuclear bombings, etc., are used in combination with moments of personal hysteria, death, humiliation and loss to create a new landscape that explores the ties between how individuals navigate incidents based upon their own memories and experiences with the world. Using the physicality of drawn and painted collage to place the viewer into the experience, these works take on a sinister mythology that connects moments of small town tragedy to tragedy shared among mass society. Referencing large scale historical events and splicing it with modern intimate, and often private experiences, heightens the drama due to the vague and haunting undertones that the works evoke. Ambiguous ghostly limbs and misplaced objects within the scenes allow for a sense of uneasiness. The series elicits a sense of nostalgia and otherworldly encounters using realism combined with moments of juxtaposed tension due to the dislocated and precarious subject matter