We and the Fish 

“Home, is where I want to be; But I guess I'm already there”

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Communities, like friend groups, families, and roommates, are wholes created by the sum of many parts. This body of work explores contradictions within community and isolation through group portraiture. Instead of reacting to the visual reality of group memories and experiences, this collection prioritizes the complex emotional reality of social dynamics. Individuals comprise every group union but can only interpret and experience life from their isolated perspective. We can never transcend ourselves to know how we exist to others or how others exist within themselves. My materials embody this notion metaphorically by creating images through the combination of many transparent layers.

 

At times beautiful and fulfilling, the community ties that enrich our lives also bring anxiety and insecurity as we navigate relationships without clarity. Rather than seeking reassurance or closure, my work embraces love and discomfort as part of the same complex dynamic; employing transparent materials, like mesh, rice paper, and glazes, to imitate instead of resist this social paradox. Visual details and identity become confused as many layers filter and inform shared experiences and memories--everyone has their own version of the past. 

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Similarly, many versions of ourselves exist to the many people we choose to share our lives and time with, and vice versa–every participating member has their own understanding of reality. Like the groups I participate in and observe, my paintings are collective and simultaneously isolated. The painting's components are rendered in solitude, only becoming part of the whole when the layers are stacked and assembled.

 

Duplicated information can obscure, confuse, and muddle reality, or even contradict itself–just as multiple perspectives are often sincere while still being at odds. These works embody the notion of paradox and contradiction by paying tribute to the love, admiration, and wholeness I experience within my communities while saving space to wrestle with the impossibility of being known by and knowing other people.

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“Guess that this must be the place; I can't tell one from another; Did I find you, or you find me?”