Art as a Vehicle for Compassion

Abstract

I address the range of human experience and emotion in watercolor paintings. Watercolor, much like emotions, is unpredictable and requires special care to harness its infinitely varied and nuanced complexities. Creating such works requires forgiveness in how water and pigment interact, as well as the physical manifestation of subjective experience. These emotional paintings express topics ranging from gender and cultural identity, to mundane life experience. Vulnerability and empathy are required to portray hardship and loss in a manner that honors humanity’s lived experience. Working beyond the boundaries codified by narrative realism, this work seeks to offer a glimpse into the realm of the unknown. My primary themes focus on aspirations, secrets, and dreamlike qualities. For this reason, I call my work ethereal realism. These fleeting moments of inspiration, while difficult to grasp and attuned to distant memories, are fortified through an improvisational painting process. Using subtle symbolism in relation to nature and soft feminine figures, I invite the audience into an alternate space where trauma can be healed, and compassion takes hold. The paintings also make use of negative space, so that viewers can insert themselves in the paintings and infer what might lie beyond humanity. This work does not merely paint a picture of melancholy but opens a window to the divine.