My artwork blends landscape and myth to create an otherworld for viewers to enter. As part of my process, I travel to remote sites and create artwork to share my experiences of these places with the local community and abroad. I utilize methods of printmaking, drawing, and installation to connect external landscapes to memories and dreams. My installations envision humans as part of nature, belonging to the landscape; and create a space to contemplate this relationship.

This direction began at Cill Rialaig Artist Retreat in Ireland in 2019, where I drew inspiration from mythology connected to a standing stones site called the Moonstones. In the story, the land welcomes the mythical Milesians by calming a storm to offer safe passage. In this and other myths, there is a reverence for the wisdom of the land and a belief that the landscape has sentience. As I approached the Moonstones, it felt as though I was entering an otherworld. I see the journey to the otherworld as a metaphor for the search for belonging. Traversing a landscape that blends nature with myth, I felt a sense of home in a place I’d never been before. I want to recreate this experience for viewers. Drawing on these concepts of landscape sentience, mythology, and memory that I have been researching for the past seven years, my current work explores landscape sentience through Irish mythological sites to create an otherworldly space of belonging.

Last spring at the Headlands Center for the Arts during my Project Space Residency, I re-entered the Marin Headlands to search for a tree I met there as a child, and found it. Constantly battered by the wind and endlessly reappearing through rolling fog, it was slightly bent with its moss-covered roots anchored to the hillside. Its resilience inspired a sense of peace that anchors me to this day. I imagined this meeting from the tree’s perspective, contemplating the experience of a tree adapted to survive such a dramatic environment. Utilizing the studio as a canvas, I built a living landscape of layered drawings and paintings to simulate being under the boughs of the tree in the mist, adding and subtracting elements throughout my stay, creating an otherworldly space of tree dreams and memories for viewers to enter.

During Midsommar on Bornholm Island in Denmark, I discovered a standing stone in a forest clearing. I recalled the experience through my monotypes, creating Ghost Forest Installation, in which viewers could walk through the reimagined landscape. In “Memory of Stone,” I created various versions of the stone to hold pieces of my memories, forming a stone alignment. The pine plantation surrounding the stone was cavernous and dense, inspiring the “Ghost Forest” veils. During the show, I invited a Norwegian folk musician to perform in the space, further bringing the experience to life.