Dark Matter

Acrylic paint and mixed media.

36x36x14"

Making “Dark Matter” was an outlet for the anxious energy inside me. 2020 brought unemployment, instability, heartbreak, climate anxiety, COVID-19, isolation, an existential crisis, and other changes which amplified my depression and anxiety. Because of quarantine (and in a small effort to help nature), I experimented with found materials (including a stretcher, old paintings, canvas scraps, clothes, a Swiffer sweeper, toothbrushes, mesh, string, utensils, chopsticks, pens, and markers). It was also an excuse to declutter my apartment without throwing anything away.

To calm my mind, I focused on the obsessive act of winding, intertwining, and tying for hundreds of hours, channeling this energy into the material so that it eventually threatened to escape and explode from the suffocating confines of the box. This heavy object represents a chaotic internal world, an anxious brain, and our need for connection. It also seems to resemble the virus which I attempt to contain.