Uprooted 

June 26th - July 19th, 2024

My work often starts outside the studio, when I’m traveling or on local walks, photographing what draws my attention.

For this show, my wandering led me to contemplate time spent in Los Angeles and the surrounding desert, and images started to form that felt thrilling, beautiful, sometimes peaceful, yet stark. In my personal life, I was thinking about the concept of “home.” At the same time, recent news stories piqued my interest about animals entering Southern California neighborhoods as their natural environments changed. Extreme weather events such as torrential rain, heat waves and fires can drastically change natural habitats. Animals must move to survive. I thought of three animals that kept coming into my work from personal encounters – the coyote, rabbit, and snake.
 

Coyotes, rabbits, and snakes don’t seasonally migrate like birds or butterflies, but will move to find a new food source or territory. I’m interested in the relationship between changing landscapes and the shift in animal territory, and my paintings imagine the journey animals embark on when their internal search is challenged.