Memento Mori
Death is strange. Most of the time it comes after a long, fulfilled life. Other times it creeps up through disease. Then there are the cases where it comes out of nowhere, completely unexpected and shocking. One moment you are here and the next moment you are gone. Not only has my own personal experience made me recognize this, but all of the disasters that happen around the world every day reinforce this impression. Life is fragile and unexpected. It’s terrifying to think of how quickly you can be taken away.
Last summer (2019) I experienced this firsthand. What began as nerve pain in my leg turned out to be a massive blood clot that ran all the way down my right leg. After three days in the hospital and two procedures, the massive clot was cleared out. Although this threat was diminished, there is still another clot lingering in my leg. Going through this traumatic experience and the slow recovery process has changed my life and the way I look at the world. After going through all of this, I want to create work that expresses all of the emotions that flowed through my head this past year.
My creative work is a reflection on the fragile nature of life. Since I have such a personal connection with this topic, many of the images in the collection are self portraits. Although my identity is quite hidden in most of the images, my tattoos are a giveaway to those who know me personally. My goal is to create mysterious and disturbingly surreal images that ask the viewer to question their own relationship with death. With the aid of mirrors, skulls, and a pocket watch, I constructed images that suggest a personal narrative through monochromatic views of nature and illusion. The concept of my work is extremely relevant to what is going on in the world today. Because of the pandemic, people are experiencing loss and are witnessing how delicate life really is.
