My Artistic Process:

When I start work on one of my pieces, I begin first with a brainstorm of the concept I’m working under. I have three series or umbrellas under which I work, all of which fall under the larger umbrella concerned with the human psyche in relation to the physical body and life experiences. My three variations of this “big idea” consist of female beauty and what that looks like from various perspectives, Body image and how culture affects the way humans perceive themselves, and the mind-body reaction to domestic violence. When I begin work on any media, I always begin by brainstorming my idea for that work. I generally do some kind of list or chart, which is made up of words I associate with the topic or idea I’m trying to convey to the viewer. The words are generally feelings that the idea stimulates in me when I think about them, along with simple words describing the idea.  After I have this list, I take it and look up other artists who seem to be working with the same concepts to see how they go about visualizing these things. After getting a good visual vocabulary associated with my literary vocabulary, I start sketching. Regardless of whether or not I am working three dimensionally or two dimensionally, I always begin with a sketch. After I work out a basic idea of the elements I want in the piece, I decide what media will work best with my idea. Normally I turn to painting because that’s my main media of choice, but occasionally, I turn to 3D if I don’t feel like a 2D image will be strong enough, or if I don’t think it will engage the viewer enough. Once I decide on my media, and have a basic idea for what images I want to be a part of it, I start to loosen up. At this point, I lie out all my necessary materials and just begin piecing together, very loosely, what I think works best. I work in a very messy manner by this time, and I am constantly going back and re-working my pieces. Often times, I finish one piece the way I had originally sketched, but in the process of working with the paint or mixed media, I figure out a better way to do it, so I trash my previous work and start over all together. It is a rare occurrence that one of my pieces looks anything at all like the sketch I started out with, however, the list of words I start out with is almost always spot on for what the image evokes in people.  This is my basic approach to creating a work of art, meticulous at first, and then broad and open to change by the end.