Statement of Intent:

I want to make art that helps me comment on my own life while somehow tapping into a grander narrative, an invisible collective heartache. The history of women photographing themselves is a rich one, and I believe it is a relevant and engaged practice. In the 1900s Clementina Hawarden created highly personal portraits often titled "Study from Life" that any woman looking into a mirror can still relate to today and the Countess di Castiglione cannot have known in 1867 her imagery would speak so loudly to me so many years later. Her obsession with documenting herself, even her feet, in a way that was risqué, candid and authentic, becomes a very real part of the history of my practice. I want my work to add to the history of this practice.

            In more contemporary times the works of Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, and Elinor Carrucci all inspire me, they also become part of the dialogue. I see my work as incorporating parts from each artist, while adding my own voice. The rich color and intimacy of Goldin photographs; the discussion of how women have become collective iconic images by Sherman; and Carruci's work about the documentation of a relationship, all inform my current work. Also informing my current work is the work of Francesca Woodman, who often used the objects closest to her own body to narrate her imagery. My work addresses the act of closely looking at one's self, while having the consciousness of a long tradition of image making behind me that narrates this kind of image making.

            By using self-portraiture as a mode of representation, I am at the same time addressing my own grief, aloneness, and exhibitionism while replacing another person's gaze with the camera's lens. The camera becomes a surrogate. I am suggesting that the photographer's looking is embedded within the photograph itself, my gaze as the photographer and my gaze as a subject are the same. My work comes from an epiphany that I could simultaneously look in at myself and look out as someone seeing me.