My drawings are a product of resiliency as much as they are of tenderness. The process of laying down fine ink mark after fine ink mark and the process of carefully observing my references for many hours over come together to yield a result that feels alive. As I grow this body of work, especially as I feel the toll it takes on my arms, hands, and shoulders, I can’t help but feel like I’m passing some of my own life into each drawing. 

I think a lot about that, about what of myself I’m leaving behind. As a woman with no children and who is on a biological cusp where pregnancy might not be the option I once thought it was, the idea of legacy is often on my mind. I don’t think of these drawings as children, though. Instead, I think of them as remains of myself, proof that I existed and felt and connected to something on this earth. Proof perhaps that I am capable of connection. Proof that a piece of myself could exist beyond my own mortal coil, if only for a moment. I know the paper will age and decay as I will, but at a much slower rate. And in the midst of these thoughts of my own existence and how I might still make something of it, I am inevitably asked about the length of time it takes me to create my large drawings. I put hours and hours of the finite resources that are my mobility and lived experience. How can I condense that neatly down to a number, as if that would add value? It’s such a funny point of attempted connection and a perennial question when I show my work.

But it’s not without purpose. Perhaps there is a public interest in the secret toil of another. There is a tension in my work between the instantly recognizable figure and the length of time it took for me to bring it into being. Between what is clear and what is unspoken. In my daily life, I often find myself struggling with expressing myself clearly, often frustrated that I’m not being understood. I frequently find myself confronted by feelings that seem too big or forbidden to have, at least for a woman. And so I draw. I start my drawings with a feeling, then a graphite sketch, then a careful laying down of pen marks, always first with the eyes. I move out inking from there, making whatever marks feel necessary to achieve the various textures, and always in many layers. In the end, I have something that can be understood, at least in some way. The black ink offers no clues as to what emotions a viewer should feel, the white background no context, the animal figure no clear human archetype. My viewers must instead confront their own relationship with whatever they project onto the figure. Often, people have their own ideas about what the creatures in my work might be feeling, and often that is different from the shape of my own inner world as I created the work. I’ve been working on letting go of the idea of being understood, though. I think, perhaps, it’s enough to connect.