My work is inspired by traditional European folktales, fairy-tales and myths.
Playing with the intersection of what is real and what is imaginary, we can confront our demons, vanquish our foes, or reshape our narratives through familiar stories.
I adored fairy-tales and folklore as a child, and as I got older fell in love with the genre of fantasy. I will always be deeply disappointed that I didn’t develop magical powers in my teens, and I would love nothing more than to have a dragon as a pet.
However, there are times that these genres can feel stuck in a particular anachronistic view of the world; old tropes, rigid relationships and hierarchies . The versions of fairy-tales, folktales and myths we all know were written down at specific times and reflect those values. Of course, these stories never had an actual definitive version. They were oral tales, free to be re-woven and reworked for the time and place.
My work embraces this fluidity by pulling these tales close to my own lived experiences. Working in traditional media, this comes through in my actual art process, drawing inspiration from real spaces, people, and references. The joy, then, is in reworking these images to push through the boundary of reality into the fantastical. By filtering fantasy through reality, I can create new stories- a series of diverging tales that start in those beloved fantastical worlds but relate to situations and experiences that speak to today.
