Restless bodies overlap, erode, and flutter in and out of existence—ghostly apparitions caught in winter’s strange and exquisite branches. The impermanence of flesh creates mystical openings within my figures, inhabited by beautiful shades of isolation, relief, and acceptance. Working in oil paint, my recent works deconstruct the realms of self-portraiture—exploring the history of skin and breath, expanding and reacting like tree rings to the exterior world. In this way, I view the act of painting one’s self as synchronistic with the patterns found in natural and biological cycles. The figure becomes either integrated or estranged to their surroundings—time elapsing and relapsing in the same manner a dream would unfold. Through a ‘mystical realism’ approach to painting, my subjects are seemingly grounded in reality—yet they do not fully connect to the environment around them. This lack of belonging reflects personal experiences of alienation and internal nomadic wonderings as an escape from the present. Artists such as Kiki Smith have inspired this desire for nomadic freedom within the art practice and in life—intimate explorations of mortality, abjection, and sexuality. The process behind my work is funerary, weaving together ancestral threads of color and form as a way to reconcile with the grief that dwells within my own body—mending the seems of my unrest. The landscape intersects with the human psychological landscape which suffers, exists, and thrives together. Depictions of ravens or other spiritual creatures often pass through my paintings—sometimes in the act of flight, but always eerily motionless. They feel like extensions of myself drifting by, or perhaps conjured from a dream. My paintings express the vulnerable body as a site of pain or discomfort from which beauty is able to be nourished.