Updated Artist Statement

I became a mother at an early age, long before any aspect of my life was ready to accommodate the needs of a child. As a result, the continual struggle of raising my daughter informs my everyday life and my work. I find the interaction between parenthood and childhood, how they influence and inform one another, fascinating. As a child, we learn almost everything from our parents, and as a parent we learn a great deal from our children. As I watch my daughter grow I remember things from my earlier years that I had long since forgotten. Childhood is not only a time of discovery and imagination, it is also a time marked by a lack of empathy and a larger understanding of the world. When you peel back the seemingly simple surface of childhood you are left with a slew of complexities characterize by feelings of apprehension and isolation. Loneliness is a common human experience and the process of coming to that realization is not an easy one. This, as well as the many other simplistic complexities, keeps bringing me back to images of childhood in my work. I explore these ideas by documenting ritualistic childhood experiences in my daughter’s life through photography. Sometimes I turn those photographs into paintings while other times I feel the photograph is the finished work.