you and I

My work is a map of the spaces left in the wake of trauma—an attempt to chart the scars both seen and unseen, the cracks that twist through the self and spill out, spreading to those we love and those we never quite manage to reach. My mediums are ink and charcoal—black, stark, unforgiving—lines of coal that wish to bleed my pain into the world-make it visible, make it real. These are not neat sketches, but full-bodied drawings, often life-sized, standing in the room ghosts of my past. They are intimate in the way grief is intimate, the way a whispered confession can be both an offering and a burden. The paper holds my breath, my body, and all the marks I’ve made with the weight of lived experience. 

These pieces are my reckoning with the aftermath of a suicide attempt—each stroke a line of negotiation, each space between the marks empty where memory and emotion swirl like smoke. Born in the tumult of twist and pull of relationships these works speak to the connection between artist and audience. The act of creating becoming a conversation, one that demands not just witnessing, but feeling. Like music, it vibrates—some notes sharp, some soft—but always carrying with it a tension that only resolves when shared. I think of Tracey Emin, whose work leaves nothing behind but the rawest truths, and of how much of art is about letting someone else see you bleed.

The tools I use are not just instruments; they are extensions of the body, of the trauma itself. Black ink, charcoal—marks made in haste and in quiet reflection, pulled from the rhythms of nature: feathers, clouds, waves. These are not just images, but gestures, bodies in motion, each one a reflection of what it is to live in a skin that carries a history too heavy to ignore. The paper I draw on—rough, textured, sometimes fragile—mirrors the weight of the experiences that come with surviving. Kiki Smith’s work calls to me here, with its focus on the body, on how it scars and heals, how it speaks even when words fail.

But these drawings are not just about trauma. They are about the silence we share after we speak, the way a pause can hold just as much as the breath we take before we speak. The white space in my work is as deliberate as the ink itself—an absence that asks to be filled with thought, with feeling, with the recognition that even in our most isolated moments, we are not alone. It is this quiet that allows us to see the complexity of human experience, to feel the pull of shared stories and unspoken connections. In this way, I think of Donald Judd, and how minimalism can open the door to endless interpretation.

For me, this work is not just catharsis; it is a call. A call to others who have lived through the same dark places, and to those who have yet to understand what it means to be shaped by their scars. In the wake of my own journey, I found that so many artists carry their own secret burdens, and through our art, we could all share them. Like Francesca Woodman, I am asking questions about identity, about what we see when we look at ourselves in the mirror. And what happens when the image staring back isn’t what we expected—or even what we wanted?

Ultimately, my work is an invitation: an invitation to sit with the rawness of life, to hold space for those experiences that don’t always fit neatly into words. To reach across the gaps and meet someone else where our story intersects. In this way, my drawings are a bridge, a place where empathy can grow, where healing can begin, and where the beauty of our collective humanity can rise from the ashes of individual pain. Because, like music, art can speak the things we can’t always say—our grief, our joy, our understanding of what it means to be human, together.