ARTIST STATEMENT

People are weak and short-lived like grass (Is 40). Leaves crumble, animals become extinct. Human beings even destroy one another in time, often, preying on the frail. Will we come face to face with nature, or rather, side by side, in an attempt to reach for the divine?

Like the subtle color palette of this series, our world is listless and in need for rebirthing. My work juxtaposes humanity with nature and youth with age. It asks viewers what it would mean to turn our hearts “to the children” (Lk 1:17). This is a slow and self-forgetful process but it brings us toward the authentic state of our origin. The abstract forms in my work suggest transcendence while the figures, as in the creation story, are crafted with much attention to detail. Like a portrait, we ourselves are seen pausing in expectation of a new earth, perfect and wild.

POEM

I’m a brutish baby,
alive with a current.
Seasons wash before me 

while a father stands polluted, 

discontent with himself.

We’re just kids in a
vault of legends,
encountering hope in a 

conversation of wings.
We race upon the grounds, 

deranged dogs to the grown-ups.

Soon we’ll be like them, 

these aging people, 

appetite of the ocean. 

They forgot to play, 

these adults who 

germinate

nothing into being. Still, 

there are a few who turn 

to hear the children.

We ask a man
who walks to water’s edge 

to accept the
shavings of gold
upon his coming casket 

as the sea
approaches his face.