This body of work was completed as my final studio project, marking the culmination of my BFA in Painting and Printmaking at VCU.
It was exhibited at The Anderson Gallery in April 2026 alongside my peers, representing both a personal and academic milestone. These paintings are artifacts of presence and compulsion. Lyrical fragments emerge through an unwound, calligraphic process. Ink, oil, and fluid acrylic are gestured spontaneously onto the canvas surface. This approach mirrors my own non-linear, fragmented mode of thinking; a reflection of how my mind resists or reframes meaning.
The marks transmute the energy of the language beneath them: some are carved to disrupt the surface and reveal hidden layers; others dissolve into it, or rise as faint scars. These gestures arise from a physical necessity to expel, abstract, or metabolize what words alone cannot translate. Each painting begins with a fragment of lyrics—phrases that snag in my mind and circle until diffused through the work. Titles like Disposable Dixie-Cup Drinker linger as traces of these catalysts, anchoring the abstraction in language.
The paintings, with their layered, abstracted, and indiscernible language, evoke the invisible worlds and emotional ambiguity we all carry. They reclaim the fragmented, incoherent, and illegible parts of ourselves so often dismissed as unintelligible. I invite viewers to sit with that uncertainty, to meet the paintings with curiosity and feel their own reactions unfold.