ARTIST STATEMENT

 

"We looked up before we knew there was anything to understand.”

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There is something deeply human about being drawn toward what we cannot fully explain. We search, wonder, and reach for meaning, often before we have the language to articulate what we are looking for. My practice grows from this impulse, from a curiosity about what exists beyond the immediately visible and the dimensions of existence that resist definition.

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Working primarily with acrylic and ink, I approach painting as a way of giving form to the accumulation of living. Experiences, memories, and emotions leave impressions on us, often in ways we don't recognize until much later. These impressions find their way into my work through fluid passages, architectural structures, and the interplay of movement and stillness.

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My process is physical and responsive, engaging my whole body. I move around the canvas  to place paint with intention, while also using my breath and the movement of the canvas to direct the flow of paint and ink. Through layers of addition and removal, sometimes four to six before completion, I build up, obscure, and reveal. I also incorporate resin and collected objects and materials, some carrying personal significance and others drawing me through their texture or form. These elements become part of the painting's history, holding fragments of experience and memory.

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My interest in looking beyond what is immediately visible is also personal. Growing up as a Black girl in predominantly white spaces and as a Muslim whose hijab made her faith visible, I became familiar with being perceived before being known. People often form impressions based on what they can readily identify, overlooking the complexity of the person before them. These experiences deepened my awareness of the distance between what we see and what we truly know. Abstraction gives me a way to explore that complexity without confining human experience to a fixed image or narrative.

 

I often say that a painting belongs to whoever is standing before it. I may bring my own experiences, thoughts, and intentions into its creation, but I cannot determine what someone else will encounter in it. I find something meaningful in that exchange, in knowing that the work can continue to exist beyond my own experience of making it.