Artist Statement

Death is nothing new to me. After I lost my uncle last year to cancer, I was plunged back into the dark abyss of what it meant to lose someone you love, something so essential and vital in your life that you're lost and have got to find a new ways of living. Memories of losing my father to cancer as a child flew back and opened up old wounds and new questions about my humanity and the connection that I had with my loved ones who were gone. I have found myself time and again in an emotional fragile state in a cruel game of "believe it or not," pulled back and forth between being told that my loved ones are dying and that they are not.

My abstract portraits of the human body became a process of healing, through which I became entranced by the distinct lines and shadows and creases and folds and the sensuality and life that they evoked. The emotional substance of the portraits become the heart of the work itself, expressed through its blend of colors and shadows, blurring the lines between what is known and what is not. Conveying a celebration of life and combining the papery thin fragility of its stature, my pieces transcend between concepts of life and death, the beautiful and grotesque and the mystery that lies behind the relationship between my pain at the loss of people I love and my celebration of living and those who have lived.

New Ideas to play with

I have always stayed within the comfort of printing my photos on paper and leaving it that way, but I think I'd like to play with ways of transferring the same image to another medium that could contribute more to my pieces. Paper is clean and clear and precise, but photography doesn't always need to be that way...not if I don't want it to, not if what I am expressing isn't clear and clean itself...

This week I have been exploring the possibilities of gel transfer. Essentially, I print my images on plain white paper and then transfer the image onto acrylic gel. I'm hoping to get interesting new textures that can play into my work. The gel transfer image is now also flexible and bendable...cool!

I am investigating what the element of size does to my pieces and am experimenting with collaging and stitching pieces together. The texture of the gel transfer reminds me of skin which excites me but I haven't decided how that will affect the content of my work. Photographs that feel like skin? Creepy? disturbing? What??

Will post photos soon...

Last fall I submitted the photo in my last post to the Creative Quarterly Journal of Art and Design and was chosen runner up in student photography! My work wasn't in the printed journal but it was included in the online gallery for their latest publication...first time my work was published outside of college. You'll have to scroll down until you see my name in the list and click it. Check out the link!

http://cqjournal.com/gallery

Hello everyone,

This new blog will be sort of an experiment for my artwork and myself as this is the first blog I've ever created as a creative outlet for my art. My hope is that this blog will become a tool through which to document my artistic process and become a place for me to jot down creative thoughts and ideas. A creative outlet for my minds eye and heart to freely express themselves and somewhere inspirations and aspirations take hold and grow...with that said, these past couple years have been a struggle, a battle on the physical and emotional front, where I've been in a constant search to figure out who and why I am who I am. 

Throughout my life I've found joy in having the freedom to explore different art mediums and the stories and imaginings of others. But as my undergraduate years unfolded, I became more interested and intrigued by this idea of being human, a concept so vague and interpreted and expressed in so many different ways. It seems to be a word we often take for granted. Yes, we are human and we know this as a fact, but I've begun to realize this thing that I am is much more deep and complex than I had ever thought it to be.  

Concepts of life and death aren't things that I usually say pop into the mind of a twenty-year-old. Sometimes I wish if I could be absorbed by weekly television shows and the other mass media sweeping our world, or be able to concentrate on skills for tomorrow's volleyball game or on this weekend's party... and I still do, but after you experience certain events in your life, certain things that make you question the life you rely on and are so invested in, your eyes don't quite see the same way, you ears don't hear exactly as they did...meanings change. Or, at least, that's what happened to me.

After my uncle passed away last November, I was plunged back into the dark abyss of what it meant to lose someone you love, something so essential and vital in your life that you're lost and have got to find a new way of living. Memories, so many memories, from childhood when my father passed away came flying back and things I had forgotten to mourn found their way up to the surface. My portfolio work last year ended up being very involved in my healing process and opened up new questions about my humanity and the analysis of what the heck that term really means?

My abstract portraits of the human body, the distinct lines and shadows and creases and folds, emitted a sensuality and liveliness that I had never foreseen nor expected. The emotional substance of the portraits became the heart of the work itself and although they never really gave me any answers to what it meant to be me or what it meant to be a human, I connected with them; because the passion, the feelings and the mystery seemed to paint a perfect picture of exactly what it was I had no words for.

Concrete ideas for which direction I go from here have yet to formalize, but I'd like to expand upon the idea of being human and can promise much more photographic work from me in the months to come!

Robin