I am a mixed media studio artist working in drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation. I am also a PhD candidate at the Burren College of Art and The National University of Ireland, Galway. My topic is “Imagination and Desire: Utopianisms and Feminisms in Contemporary Art Practice”. I grew up looking at paintings in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and was inspired by romantic painters who, it seemed to me, were communicating, in a direct way, in the present moment. I set about to learn to draw and paint, to become a part of this conversation. I also am the mother of five daughters, taken up in the task of raising them. My experience as a mother influences my art. I am drawn to art and classical forms, compelled to keep creating, as the painters of the museum did, and inspired by the idea that the world around me in the midst of raising daughters, even just a pile of old clothes, can be transformed through and into art. I also notice how works of art that inspire me contain an energy, a creative force, and this force can be transformed to converse with the everyday material of my life. I see this as the utopian impulse in myself. This is the underlying theme of my work: to understand art as a way to re-imagine and transform the fabric of day to day life, which also forms a social critique.
Utopia and Contemporary Art 