Artist's Statement      

My investigation explores how I can represent my own experiences with religion and spirituality and their manifestations in society through motifs of insects and bugs. This inquiry was motivated by a quote from my favorite childhood comic author Bill Watterson, stating that “Being human means being somewhere between gods and bugs. But a lot closer to bugs.” The works explore themes such as how identities are shaped through spiritual archetypes, the effects of belief in fate, and societal issues that are religion-adjacent. 

I have worked in many different art forms before, but from the beginning of my process I committed myself to creating each piece with at least two different art skills. I had never attempted mixed media before. Therefore, I began by merely accenting a digital piece, Praying Mantis, by layering it three-dimensionally and embellishing it with golden accents to explore the tension between the splendor of religion with the diminishing, bug-like feelings it can elicit. However, as my work progressed, I challenged myself to create works such as Looking Inward or Tithonus, which both explore religion’s influence on conceptions of the self, in which the focal points of the piece combine different media such as pen drawing and painting or scratchboard and colored pencil. The chronological progression of my works reflects my increasing comfort with this experimentation in using materials, in addition to shapes or lines, to convey my ideas. Additionally, the pace of the AP course forced me to work more loosely in order to meet deadlines. To cope with this, I learned to practice intentionality in my linework in lieu of extensive detail. For example, the insect’s head in Praying Mantis was a painstakingly drawn digital piece, while my later work Arachne displays a spider’s face on a scratchboard – a less precise but arguably more expressive medium. Through these experiences, I learned to convey my messages in increasingly less conventional ways that help my art remain unique and eye-catching.