Bug Love

Bugs, such a tiny creature that can inspire so much fear in people. Instead of fearing them people should be learning from them. The Zen of bugs. They are everywhere, even in your bed and on your eyelashes. I want the transformation, I want the acceptance, I want the beauty and miraculousness of them, I want the perseverance and strength, I want the ability to shift and adapt to different and new situations, I want the connection they have to each other and everything. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your skeleton on the outside to protect you? Wouldn’t it be nice to just accept the hurdles in life and not fight them, and then all your energy could be on the solution not the fight. Wouldn’t it be nice to make a cocoon, disintegrate and then recreate into something totally different. To have been a caterpillar-earth bound, and then become a butterfly – sky bound. How do they do that? I want that. I am connected to them. They are in me. I know I can make the change, transform into one of them.

My artwork reflects this desire, using the human and insect form to visually experiment with this obsession, to bring the inside out and to learn to become like them. I create images of insects, attempting to make something that seems so scary to people into something beautiful to be appreciated and learned from. I also attempt to create my human transformation in paintings of the female figure, bringing the bones out into a protective layer an exoskeleton. I use whatever media will inspire me and work to create my image, this usually ends up being paint and canvas or wood but can be collage or sculptural.