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Abstract

My work examines the idea of distortion of the human face. Many of my drawings focus on the nose, the element of the face that I find most structural. The idea of the face as a flat object and the nose protruding out, almost looking as if it is placed on the face, is very interesting to me, perhaps connecting back to my fascination with architectural structures. I have used the nose as the main focus of distortion, oversized and often asymmetrical. These exaggerations should make the viewer feel as if they could crawl into this opening and explore its interior.

Drawing on a large scale allows me to move around the surface with my whole body, using my arms to create gestural marks. I begin the construction of forms on some sort of charcoal-covered surface that I render prior to the constructing process. I don’t consider my work to have started until I have covered most of the paper’s surface with some sort of charcoal mix: this becomes my blank page, where I can begin drawing. The marks left by my body's gestures provide the framework from which each arrangement emerges. Process is extremely visible in my work; bodily structures emerge from my body’s movement, revealing both the early gestures and secondary rendering. Older drawings are torn or cut up and collaged onto the surface of new drawings, complicating and interrupting the continuity of forms. Moving between multiple types of mark making, I want the viewer to feel the duality of scale and style, creating a connection and relationship to recognizable facial features, familiar yet made strange.

These drawings are not intended to portray a specific emotion or elicit a certain feeling in the viewer. Instead I aim to interest the viewer by creating a feeling of uncertainty, and to invite him or her to form a personal understanding of each individual work, both visually and emotionally.

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