Art as a catharsis

 I am a self-taught artist raised between the urban cities of California and the wild reaches of Ireland. Every year, my mama would take my sister and I to visit our family in her hometown on the coast cradling the Irish sea. Growing up with the rugged mountains, stormy seas and old Irish forests that shaped my childhood, it sowed a deep relationship with the mythic wild.​ With guidance from the land, my work embodies the intelligence of the natural world and our mythopoetic, intrinsic relationship with the earth. In shifting our awareness to understanding that every piece of the landscape is alive, it brings us to a greater place of presence within ourselves. Every stone has a story, every creek is an artery, every plant is an ancestor and every seed is a dream.

 

I aim to build bridges between our many walks of life, expanding awareness into the importance of protecting ecosystems, tending to traditions and deepening communities with one another and our more than human kin. By drawing upon folklore, naturalism and sensuality, I illustrate stories that interweave our inner and outer landscapes. Cultural reclamation asks to be kept alive by balancing traditional systems with breathing new life into it, continuously nourishing a living umbilical cord of our humanness. As I slowly turn my emphasis on my own cultural reclamation, I continue to draw upon the human experience of  our emotional duality. How emotions like grief, joy, vulnerability and strength are inextricably bound to one another. While my work continues to morph and develop, these palpable emotions act as a thread throughout my art.​​

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I have been apart of a few creative outlets including teaching, mural projects, youth outreach, non-profit work, gallery exhibitions, and live painting at events. I live in Santa Barbara, California, in un-ceded Chumash territory. You can find me barefoot in the mountains, harvesting stories and medicine, and remaining insatiably curious about the world.