Artist Statement

     I create art because I like the way it makes me feel, I like how I can make something that means something personal to me in one aspect and it can also mean something to another person in a completely different aspect. My pieces revolve around the idea of divorce. I wanted to make art that can resonate and help people going through the emotions and feelings of a divorce. I wanted to show family's going through a divorce that they are not alone. My pieces have this ironic and funny twist on a dark and relatively taboo topic. I wanted to show humor in the pain and make people laugh. I decided to set my pieces in the 1950's because back then divorce was uncommon and many women stayed in bad marriages. I wanted to show a woman getting out of a toxic marriage and going out on her own, while also later on shifting to the ex husbands perspective. My pieces explore the idea of a newly divorced couple going out into the world and having new experiences. I would love to have people come up to me and tell me how a piece meant a lot to them at a certain time in their life. I think that is what art is all about, connection. 

     As I first came up with my idea for my sustained investigation I knew I wanted to market a divorce, I called it Would You Like To Buy A Divorce? I had no idea how I was going to convey this but I had this idea of the setting being in the 1950’s. I wanted to show the steps of grieving a divorce with this satire outlook on it. I wanted to make art that can resonate and help people going through the emotions and feelings of a divorce. I wanted to show family's going through a divorce that they are not alone. I knew that I wanted to use photography but I also wanted to describe the scene and what was happening. I decided to go for this graphic design look that makes my pieces look like an advertisement. I experimented with some filters to make my piece look like a painting from the 1950’s and found a method that I liked that showed just that. In the beginning my SI’s were less dark and more uplifting. They did not press too many buttons and were less controversial. Over time I have been getting more taboo with these pieces. There are darker themes going on in these SI’s now but with the same funny satire twist. I started to push my boundaries with these pieces but knowing there is a line I can not cross.

     I hold all my pieces close to my heart, they have helped me grieve my own experience with divorce. I love when art is made up of real experience and emotions and that's why I love Salvador Dalí, Ron Hicks, Tim Burton, and Walt Disney. I like showing the strange and unusual and to be set apart from everyone else and these artists do a good job of doing that. I will be continuing my art and education next year at Ohio University while majoring in Graphic Design. I hope that you will see more of my art one day and I may be making graphics for some of your favorite companies.