Battered Women Hear my Cry
Fueled by empathy and sympathy, I focus my art work on the narrative of abuse aimed at women and children. My work spans illustrative components, suggestive elements, and a nuance of character shifts. Empowerment, victimization, as well as abstracted visual cues are some approaches that describe these character rolls. My hope is that my drawings can add to the ongoing and important conversation of abuse. Although I am motivated by an array of social injustices, I try and embrace various forms of visual expression through illustrative language as well as subtle hints at versions of inequality and abuse.
For example, in my piece, “Roses are red/ They’re beat black and blue/ Roses are sold/ Where you live too,” I portray children, adolescents and adult women as abused, neglected organic forms. I depict penetration and unwanted touch through yonic openings and exaggerated, twisted facial expression. I do not aim to make the viewer disgusted that I depict abuse, but rather, disgusted that various forms of abuse continue to happen every day. Through my research, I have noticed that my work is heavily influenced by pop surrealism—particularly the works of Mark Ryden and Liza Corbett. This nod towards pop surrealism allows my work to fit in with contemporary art yet stand out due to the unsettling content. I use large eyes not to emphasize youth, but to emphasize fear. The background is stained with tea; the act of brewing tea is often viewed as a feminine, domestic task. I allow the random tea stain blots to be the outlines of the various faces and hands. I look for body parts within the stains first, then I simply outline them and further enhance the tea stain with a bit of shading. There is content in the tea stains; the content is permanent, much like the scars of abuse victim/survivors. End the silence, stop the violence.
