Little Queen

More about the work:
Art has the ability to bend time. I create visual love letters between past and present by rescuing discarded photos & creating new lives for these found figures. I search high and low for once treasured and now discarded photographic relics and create work that gives them a second life on the wall. I use mixed media to blend textures and surfaces – often working directly on top of photographic reproductions to create graphic new environments for these paper doll characters. The art lives to celebrate the small moments in our lives that seem to pass by with little weight yet stick with us as fond memories forever. Many of us have lofty expectations for our lives – but in the end it is those small simple moments we share with one another that make each of our lives beautiful. This work serves as a playful reminder to always make time to truly be present and enjoy these special moments. It functions as a totem of our past and of our growth as we move towards even more beautiful futures.

For my “Snapshots of Childhood” series I found source images for my work by picking through both my vintage found photo collection as well as my own photos of myself as a child. I choose images of simple moments of childhood joy that felt universal .Feelings of nostalgia can be complex, sometimes even problematic (as humans have a habit of “rosy retrospection”) but in looking back I think there are some feelings and experiences many of us can connect through. Even if our childhoods were greatly different there is something familiar and so special about experiencing the world with that childish wide eyed wonder. I think we can learn a lot through looking back through and examining who we were at different stages in our life. We can nurture our past selves, grow, heal, and even learn how to see the world with a little more simple childlike wonder and adventure. I personally have been focusing on nurturing my own inner child more in my work, focusing on an effort to detach from the outcome of my practice and simply enjoy the process – much like that little girl inside of me who loved nothing more than coloring and playing with art supplies on the floor for an entire afternoon.