Artist Statement
When the world feels heavy and the headlines bring a daily dose of dread, I retreat to the studio to find quiet ground. My daughter is an international graduate student at Harvard—an institution increasingly caught in political crossfire—making the news deeply personal. It touches home. It sits heavy in my chest.
Weight of the World was a failed print that I kept working on. I pushed it to the point where the paper could no longer absorb any more wax. I worked both sides of the paper, folding it to create fractured lines that I later emphasized with coloured pencil. A stencil of repeating circles was used to apply pigmented encaustic gesso to the wax, extending the piece even further.
The surface feels dense and thick, and that’s part of its meaning. I didn’t stop when it got difficult. I kept going—layering marks, pushing the material, searching for balance. There’s a persistence in the way the forms repeat and shift. Even the act of finishing it—of not giving up—became a form of meditation.
