Cathartically I paint to express the heavy emotions that I internalize as a patient of late-stage melanoma.
You decide who will appear in Artforum Magazine, take home $25,000, and display their work at The Art of Elysium's Salon!
I create first person narratives which puts the viewer inside of my experiences. My figurative works uses flesh as a vulnerable vessel to tell my personal story. Creating this body of self-portraits has opened a dialogue as an invitation to better understand the impact that the sun can have on unprotected skin. There is a two-pronged effect of my body of work. Education and therapy, which often overlap. This is my drive to create.
Where do you find inspiration?I was losing myself. So, I began to paint. The act of pressing oil paint with a brush onto a canvas was therapy needed to help repair the psychological damage that I had experienced. That is where it started in 2020. I was on a self-tortuous path of destruction and hopelessness since my cancer diagnosis in 2018 and it had taken a toll. The life I was living to stay alive was exhausting. Painting revived me.
What would you do with $25,000?I would invest the money back into my art practice by building an art studio behind my home that would allow a personal space for me to create that would be separate from my living space.
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