About the Artist

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Throughout my artistic career I have worked towards finding a distinct artistic style that I feel works for me as an artist as well as represents me stylistically. Taking studio arts courses in college rather than the STEM courses I had to take in high school has allowed me to make more creative decisions with my art. These decisions often present themselves through exaggerated texture and non-realistic techniques for adding depth to pieces.

My non-creative, scientific background that I come from has led to some stiffness and lack of creativity with the compositions of my pieces. In the majority of my art I compensated for this by using bold and unrealistic colors to add interest to pieces. Entering college and taking basic drawing classes forced me to step back and face black and white art.

Working in black and white forced me, but also allowed me to be able to focus more on shapes and values. Reduction drawings on both a small and large scale let me explore basics and more abstract creative representations of objects through removing pigments off the page exposing the image, rather than facing a blank white page.

I took a liking to charcoal reduction drawing, and developed this skill, loving the depth and contrast I was able to get with it. I was allowed to delve deeper into lights and darks and how I want to depict them in my other pieces. Being able to complete complex pieces in black and white gave me confidence to then encorporate color into pieces.

Allowing myself to re-integrate color into my work opened up my artistic works to a more identifiable artistic style. The reintegration of color shed light to a love of colored pencil and detailed, colored line work.

My art has quickly become by majority, colored pencil work. It also has taken a shift from portraiture to things such as fruits, animals, and other still life set ups. I loved the diversity of subjects I was able to portray after branching out of portraiture and the texture and emotion I was able to achieve with colored pencil.

Allowing myself to go through these artistic stages and phases has pushed my art to the place it currently is. Experimentation with the basics has pushed my creativity and my artistic drive and methods in a way that stands out to me as an artist, giving me the ability to create an identifiable style that I can continue to make my own and evolve.