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Trauma can sever, split, or fracture our sense of self. Healing involves wrestling with what can be many connected, entangled, and yet disconnected parts of ourselves. This piece reflects those rifts alongside the attempt to integrate them, revealing through-lines that may have even become more clear through this process of ripping the whole into parts and collaging into a new form.
Do things fall apart to come back together? Do they come back together to fall apart again? Humans are a storytelling species. Stories inevitably require twists and turns, tension building and falling, integration and disintegration. This duality is embedded in how we make meaning of ourselves, each other, and our lives.
About the Whispers Among The Trees collection
Fairies are mythical beings found in folklore. They’ve been cast as spirits of nature, demoted angels, demons, magical creatures, spirits of the fallen, and the origins of humankind. A fairy godmother grants a wish, transforms the ordinary into something enchanted. Fairies can be mischievous, luring the unsuspecting with glittery dust only to play a trick for their own amusement. The stories surrounding fairies mirror the dualities of existence: creation and destruction, the complications of trying to fit anything at all into rigid categories. The universe is built on paradox.
This series of works comes from trying to answer unanswerable questions. It comes from imagined conversations between a strange human (sweet child of the universe) and a woodland fairy named Existence. It comes from the notion that humans may imagine a fairy to be a tiny feminine thing because a tiny feminine thing can be overpowered, and thus, (some are convinced) can be controlled. I draw a parallel here to my own story of surviving rape as a child and young adult. I struggle with more unanswerable questions: why do people do bad things? why rape? why harm? They tried to overpower and control me while I was still growing, while I was tiny. This series is me expressing and experiencing my power as an imaginative, curious, playful, passionate, contemplative, free, and loving human being.
This series comes from the idea of the universe as an unfathomably expansive tapestry that we all weave together. It comes from an imagined species of black hole bug-bees. It comes from finding beauty, whimsy, and wisdom in contemplating the mysteries of existence. It comes from this idea: as I search for answers, I make art from the questions.
This whimsical fine art series features original semi-abstract drawings, nature-inspired mixed-media portraits, and archival prints. Each piece explores themes of imagined folklore, childhood trauma healing, and the mysteries of existence.
