My large-scale, layered paintings take forests and the surface of water as their primary sources of reference. I’m drawn to the density of these natural forms, the unending shimmer across my visual field. This kind of optical experience evokes the perception that everything in my scope of vision is equally important, that everything is equally alive.

Artists have long used ornament and decoration to create “all-over” compositions that speak to this consonance, unity, or uninterrupted alive-ness in nature. However, the words “ornament” and “decorative” are commonly used as pejorative terms in Western painting. The academic research behind my work reveals that this view of the decorative as an inferior means of artistic production bears strong links to overt racism, sexism, and colonialism. This is an especially intriguing observation at our present moment in history, a moment when we are witnessing in full measure the flaws inherent in the industrialized world’s assumptions about the natural world.

Though my bodies of work are varied, they all involve abstraction derived from experimentation with materials and processes. I employ laser-cutters, silkscreen procedures, and textiles techniques to arrive at images that emerge from a way of working rather than from a predetermined idea. My use of repetitive mark-making elicits nature’s ceaseless changes, its emergent structures, and its uninterrupted aliveness, evoking a vision of nature countervailing to the one held by industrialized society.