Artist Statement

I practice the slow and meditative processes of embroidery, drawing and painting. My work is inspired by landscape, architecture, my internal world, and most recently, motherhood. I enjoy translating patterns and imagery in unexpected ways across mediums, where a hard brick pattern becomes a soft textile stitched in thread. By using a different form, material, or scale, I am able to discover something new. These pairings make visible the paradoxes that I explore in my art, such as tension and ease embodied by tight and loose stitching.  Other contrasts I am interested in include stability/instability, mess/containment, and perfection/imperfection. My work allows me to hold opposing emotions that inhabit the same experience.  

My pieces flow between representational and abstract imagery, often finding form in both simultaneously. Using objects, pattern, and nature as a vehicle, I distill these down to core visual elements of color and texture. By stitching in different directions in the same color thread, the light reflects distinctive tones and colors, and makes the interplay between color and light physical. My palette is rooted in earth tone colors that reflect my upbringing in the American southwest.

I am influenced by Anni Albers’ material and pattern explorations, as well as the subjects and color treatment of Georgia O’Keeffe and Agnes Martin. I am inspired by all the women whose textile and domestic work is often unrecognized. Drawing on the rich history of needlework, I seek to merge ‘art’ and ‘craft’ and break taboos surrounding ‘women’s work.’ By embroidering directly onto paper, I take needle and thread out of the embroidery hoop while paying homage to the power of textiles, which are passed between generations and whose purpose is multifaceted.