Artist's Statement
The child of a teenaged mother and soldier father, I was born in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in a coal mining community. However our military family traveled extensively bouncing back and forth from trailer parks to Thailand, allowing me to experience the pursuit of friends and intimacy while being perceived as a definite outsider. Creating and selecting images intuitively, I believe I am always seeking a sense of shared humanity and continuity with my ancestral roots.
I work in series seeking to create a composite portrait of a community using individual narratives.
My subjects are typically extended family and children of friends. As I make portraits to document their current experiences, the work becomes a narrative about conflict that is both personal and political. While the images are largely factual, my intent is to allow enough uncertainty to encourage imaginative rambling about the impact of contemporary issues of identity.
Although I am motivated by a need to document moments before they disappear, my work is informed by things past, popular culture and current artists. For me, the images are a gate to a story waiting to be told. They are meant to allow us hope and an appreciation for the complicated, contradictory elements of our universal identity.