YCL Art

Art has been an ever evolving and never ending learning process in my life.

My earliest memories of creating started with the basics: crayons, Play-Doh, pencils, finger paints, anything and everything I could get my hands on. I can’t tell you the first time I made an official piece of “art,” but what I can tell you is that I can’t remember a time in my life that I haven’t been in some sort of creative process.

About 10 years ago, I started painting my childhood memories. The process really started by accident, I had found some old photos of my sister and I taking a bubble bath in a trashcan.  It was such an odd but happy memory of simpler times. My first work of this memory was a charcoal drawing, the figures had faces and more defined body parts, but as the series developed, I felt that the details were taking away from the feeling of simplicity I wanted to portray. With time the children in my work became very stylized and faceless, it’s almost as if the works says “insert your face here,” to the viewer.

I wanted to have an element of child drawn images, but with an attention to detail, color, and technique that made you look beyond just the initial surface. To accomplish this, I incorporate collage, mixed media, and a layering method of colors, text and imagery.

I have found so much fulfillment in this series, artistically, emotionally and spiritually. It has lead me to question several things in my life: Where is the simplicity now? Where is the innocence that allowed me to laugh? Can I still find joy taking a bubble bath in a trashcan? All these elements are still in my life, my childhood series has helped me reconnect personally with them and in addition the viewer also gets to take a trip down memory lane for a moment of joy, innocence, and simplicity in their very own life.