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I grew up in Astoria, Oregon which is a little fishing village on the west coast of the United States.
My whole neighbourhood were mostly Finnish.
Most of the artwork there was all ocean sceneries, oil paintings and watercolours in small little galleries.
Anything a little bit alternative wasn’t really talked about or shown.
It wasn’t until I was about 16 my art teacher said “you need to take this class.”
So I went to the community college, took an art history class. I was just so excited by the experience.
It just made me want to continue doing art.
I use my art to find answers or question things.
For me communicating a strong message isn’t necessarily important.
I never want to give people answers, I want them to discover something for themselves.
There’s always messages in my work. I want the viewer to take their own experiences into it
rather than me telling them something directly.
My inspiration is usually from my own experiences;
things that I’ve seen or gone through, and use those as seeds.
I feel kind of compelled to use myself or to use what I know.
I’ve always found it difficult to work from what I don’t know or feel.
This colour here has kind of been my inspiration (laughs) I don’t know why. I absolutely love it.
I don’t know exactly what I’m doing until I start working, if that makes sense.
Like I knew I wanted this figure but I kind of thought “Oh, maybe I’ll have something coming out of his head.”
I don’t have a pre-set drawing so I probably waste a lot of paint and time that way.
But I kind of like the intuitive process I guess, of this way of working.
I’ll start painting and then I realise it doesn’t work so I have to repaint it or sand it out.
I work against myself a lot of the time.
But I kind of like that way of working because if I hadn’t tried that I wouldn’t know not to do it again
and I feel like I’m always learning rather than being too confident in exactly what’s going to happen.
I kind of like that feeling.
I’m just always finding something else and new ways of working.
I think the work always feeds off it, you know, feeds off itself
and then something else comes and something else comes, so it’s an endless journey really.
I’m quite a shy introverted person but I’m quite extroverted at the same time.
I’m sitting on the fence. I think my artwork has always been my extroverted side
and it kind of speaks for me.
I’ve always dreamt of being an actress
or just being that type of person that can show themselves,and the work does that for me.
I’ve been in New Zealand for about 10 years now.
I found New Zealand very isolating for me.
It took honestly I think about 6 years before I really found my feet, found friends that I connected to.
I just realised how insular you become when you don’t have other people to connect to.
You need to be able to feel a bit normal,
you need to feel that your journey, your path, the choices you’re making are valid.
And that’s where I was using my art form to figure that out.
My past work definitely was about me being American and just searching that identity and my place in it
and the different environment than being in America.
I was trying to make connections to who I was and who I am
and I think that’s where I started using my artwork really strongly about being an American,
finding my place at home, and finding my balance as a person here.
Then basically September 11th happened and it really made me question more,
just trying to find my feet and who I was relating to that but also being here in New Zealand.
Where I grew up in Astoria there were heaps of crows in my backyard.
And camping it would be obsessively there, it was just always there.
It became really a vehicle for me to voice what was going on for myself
and all my qualities, good and bad, it wasn’t perfect.
It was kind of naughty and but it was strong and weak at the same time.
And that was a kind of vehicle to search; it could fly, but it can make a home,
and so I was using it to discover home quite a lot.
So that’s where that symbol came from: making my own home.
The wax pieces I did, all of them had nests inside, so making their home.
The other plaster pieces were me writing personal stuff on the outside
so it became another vehicle to tell my story.
I really consciously decided not to use the crow anymore
because I wanted to really move on from that imagery and that symbol.
But I just wanted to finish and I actually wanted to kill it,
so I did a couple of paintings of actually ripping it to shreds
and it felt really good that it no longer exists.
But I still love it and I still want to use it but I think it will come in a different form someday.
But not now.