Artist Statement: I am asking my viewers to challenge their perception and step outside what they consider normal and comfortable. I want them to resist the urge to turn away and look a little deeper. If they gaze long enough into the abyss, does it gaze back?

The show you are seeing is curation of anatomical and biological subjects seen through my brand of figurative realism, like rose tinted glasses without the naivety. My art lives in the genre of horror, specifically body horror. Body horror is characterized by exploration of discomfort in the mortality of the human body but is unique from other horror genres. Whereas in most horror niches the body is fodder to be torn apart for shock an awe, in body horror the body is being transformed into something beyond recognition. Body horror elicits fear of the body deteriorating, metamorphosizing and becoming something else outside of our control. This brings in discussions of gender identity and body autonomy, particularly those in biologically female bodies. It triggers subconscious fears of disease, viruses, parasites, the anxieties of puberty. Body horror is a tool for me to create work that stays in the viewers mind and forces them to think long after they’ve walked away. The sugar that helps the medicine go down is my figurative approach to the source materials in oil and acrylic paints. You may ask why I choose to show blood and gore instead of more traditional and less polarizing subjects. Gore is a visual equivalent of an air siren, it’s arresting. Red can be automatically associated with emergency vehicle lights, stop signs, and blood. It’s a visual signal to stop and observe your surroundings because there is something wrong. It’s a primer for the fight or flight response, the brain’s most basic self-preservation instincts. But for humans who mostly go about their modern lives in safety, it can become a morbid fascination that can be felt when you see a car crash; The gore elicits a sympathetic reaction. It’s horrible but you just can’t look away because you can’t help but see yourself there.

I’ve always had fascinations with the macabre parts of life, I’ve adored snakes and bats since I was little, although ironically, I was a wimp of a child who was terrified by the Goosebumps section of the library. But as I grew up and gained diagnoses of MDD and some variety of anxiety disorder, the darker parts of life became comfortable. Horror movies and scary stories became a comforting mechanism. I would intentionally make myself sick to my stomach googling diseases, initially triggering anxiety, and paranoia. But what I found as I read more and understood more, I feared it less. I began to come to terms and accept the parts of the world that were terrifying and uncomfortable and find their silver linings. As a biology student, these silver linings become works of art when I understand how they function in the world I share with them. And by extension, begin to forgive my own flawed flesh, cells, signaling molecules, and soul. My work on a personal level is my addressing of my anxieties. I am pushing myself to stare at my fears in my content choices and challenging my hands to create that which I fear in full beautiful detail. I want my viewer to look at my work the way myself and countless others look at themselves naked, with equal parts fear, revulsion, and awe in its beauty in function and form.