I am a visual narrator using ink, paper, graphite, and gesso paint. My handwritten lettering switches between hidden and revealed. Although the scale is large, the work is intimate. By utilizing readily known materials; pencil, ink, paper, it allows the viewer to be welcomed in and know the piece with ease. I draw and write about my own past memories, the falseness, the fogginess, the bells, the whistles, the denial. I touch on personal trauma but prefer to speak to it with humour rather than solemnity. I work in series, mostly of drawings relating to memory. I use ink, white paper and gesso to show the effect of sinking into the paper with ink, or laying on top of the gesso. There is a drama between belief sinking in, a truth, and a push forward of disbelief or a not wanting to believe, the denial. At times the ink is allowed to dry in a thick layer, and other times it is washed out and grey. The monochromatic nature of most of my work testifies to the false or truth binary of memory recall. Between the complexity of energy and dramatic erasure means at times I can be left with a nothingness or a depression. All of the energy has been used up creating a quick movement to then be frozen and back to a void. Nothing left where there used to be something. The trauma is intentionally obfuscated, black and white drawings lead to a haunting, an otherworldly presence by moving around the exact thing to be discussed. The errors in the work gives it strength. I take joy in the blemishes, the torn paper, the accidentally dripped ink, and the curling paper edge. I am a recovering perfectionist.
