The way I think of myself as an artist comes from the concept that, as a woman, I push myself to be different than others. My subject matter is mainly women, I explore each of these creations through various techniques and mindsets. I let my emotions and my imagination guide me and I just create. There is rarely a beginning sketch before my final work. I use my imagination to create the image and place that image intuitively. Then I enhance my designs, using color and create my texture with my brushes to stroke the paint, with the idea that however it evolves, it’s my work generated from my pure artistic vision. This approach is used in both my paintings and my journalistic work.

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My most recent painting work series is titled “forbidden fruit”, and stems from the idea that women are often looked at and admired through the viewers eyes as an immoral pleasure, based on appearance alone. Fruit is brightly colored, tasteful, and appealing to those who eat and examine it. Both fruit and women have the same impact in my view, so putting them on the same canvas, I can capture the spectator’s attention and draw them in. Though these are regarded as surreal subjects, in the end you can look at and admire these women and their fruit factors, but you cannot touch them as they are paintings on a canvas. These works all have different features, techniques and concepts explored through pure mind and emotion linked as one. Painting allows me to escape reality and even alter it to construct surreal, bright images.

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Although my paintings and journalistic work are separate entities, they are connected by my view of the world as a woman. Being women alone in the world, we realize that we live in a potentially scary place with strangers- people we do not know. The risk of harm is always a factor in deciding whether we approach or avoid strangers. My journalistic work is documented in a real place- a courthouse- where these strangers exist because of actions they have taken. They are being judged for their actions in this unpredictable world. Being able to document and see these people with faces and names makes me, as a woman, more suspicious of my surroundings. I am able to remember each story, person, and crime by looking at my documented sketches. Though some offenses are more vicious than others, I focus on sketching people who are accused and being held accountable for their actions. The idea of how many more villains are out there that have not yet been discovered or detained, is an alarming thought. In my work as a sketch artist, I rely less on my imagination, because I focus on the subject in front of me and illustrate the image as fast as I can.

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While my paintings help me to escape reality, my court sketches suck me back into the real world.