I naturally find interactions between individuals fascinating, as one's behavior changes depending on the context, environment, politics and persons involved (the private vs. public persona). Observing and analyzing others is part of our daily lives: we observe the behavior exhibited around us, and then utilize this information in order to gauge the proper response. We receive rules concerning social behavior in many forms of cultural conditioning: art, mass media, literature, and observation of those around us. In fact, we learn at a very young age of the consequences of not following the general status quo. These “rules” are never simple black-and-white guidelines, and what might work in one context may have devastating effects in another. It is this multifaceted nature of human emotions and the behavior they cause that I focus on in my work. 

This series of prints and drawings centers on the recreation of social situations. By choosing unsettling figure placement, skewed perspectives and raking light sources I take the viewer on a journey through the playground of human interaction. The "characters" involved are loosely inspired by mythology, fairy tales, and/or religious iconography, as these are all means of handing down "social rules" from one generation to the next. Themes of social inclusion/exclusion and alienation suffuse the works, and prompt viewers to consider their roles in their private social universes. The prints are purposefully seductive in terms of the techniques used and arrangement of the compositions (a “beauty that bites”), which in effect construct the viewer’s dual role as both the voyeur and the object of scrutiny.