I work in a variety of mediums, including video, painting, and installation. My art draws aesthetic influences from the gothic and occult to explore themes of ritual, spirituality, mental health, memory, time, and the fragility of life. I create this work as a way of working through my own journey with depression and PTSD, which stimulates the brain through flashbacks. In order to access subconscious associations, images are edited to appear quickly, almost too fleeting for the eye to understand without watching repeatedly.
As a practicing witch, I incorporate rituals of tarot and spellwork, as these have helped me cope during times of mental difficulty and have shed light on parts of the self that I may have denied or suppressed. Red pervades the work, a meditation on how the color operates under a multitude
of emotional states: anger, passion, lust, sex, panic, while also watching how it works when applied to religious imagery. In the video, there are moments of both peace and rage, calm and distress, night vs. day, spiritual enlightenment vs. spells and mayhem. It asks the viewer to question previously held stereotypes about witches and the occult. While it may seem like witches are hexing and burning out of rage, the history of wicca is moreso a history of finding peace within oneself, and spellwork is only an outward manifestation of this inner change. It is about individual empowerment and inviting positive influences in one’s life. After dealing with my own trauma, spellwork and finding my identity as a witch was one way of reclaiming my strength. To be reborn, one must find peace in burning the old self.