Artist Statement

Freudian Wet Dream

             Both my parents have versions of obsessive compulsive disorder, so growing up I was forced to wait until my dad triple checked the stove, the lights, the locks, while counting methodically, sounding like a metronome, and wait until my mother—whose OCD is fixated upon Christianity—prayed to god for confirmation from a voice inside her head to go ahead with her daily minutiae.
             This compulsive obsessive behavior interests me.  In particular, compulsions based on biological and psychological necessity: sex, peeing, pooping, crying, breathing.  The incurable mental hiccups of taking too much, over-doing it…perpetually hungry—eyes bigger than what a stomach can hold—all the time.  I explore these compulsions through narrative illustration, gathering inspiration from the groundbreaking underground comix artists who created the genre in 1960s San Francisco. The paneling format I’ve integrated into my work helps move the viewer through an event and feeling.
             The general accessibility of the comic genre is helpful when my storytelling may include some intimidating topics.  I arrange ideas into a framework, both figuratively and literally—chopping big ideas into bite sized pieces, which can be either eaten one by one or gorged upon, as is my family’s tradition.  I work in a variety of scales; from large paintings to small, intimate drawings.  Through a shakey hand and with scrawling-scratchy marks, I convey my inherited intensity and my inherited instability—traits instilled upon me by my parents--now materialized onto paper, a part and apart from me, to be shown and then sold or filed away.