Artist statement

The reason I create is because I have to. Ever since I saw the fragility of my own life during a terrorist attack, I have a need to look at the fragility of what is beautiful and worth looking at. I need to create calm, because it was art that kept me calm when I didn’t know whether I’d live to see another day.

Facing something that is bigger than me, I see the pettiness of daily anxieties and feel alive. Mountains do that to me, hanging over me, calling out to me with tales of achievement, patience, stillness. Fearlessness.

I’m impressed by their immovability, their sharp edges soften me. Softly, tenderly, the dust of soft pastels turns into stone, a desperate reverse of the way mountains erode to dust. I need to preserve something of that great beauty, this is my individual contribution. My ode to the beauty that is both eternal and bleakly vulnerable.