Arborescence

Arborescence is a series of oil paintings depicting human figures and tree-like abstractions enmeshed in colorful entanglements. This body of work meditates on our broken relationship with the Earth – one that relegates “nature” to a realm outside of and apart from the human, an inert object devoid of agency, a resource to be controlled, commodified, and exploited. Trees and birds and rocks and rivers are rendered mere matter, rather than beings in their own right. 

Through painting, I seek to visually affirm a fundamental oneness: we are the Earth, not separate from it. In my compositions, the intertwined human and arboreal bodies collapse binaries between nature and culture, human and nonhuman, self and other, individual and collective. The work of restoring kinship with the more-than-human world is the work of widening our circles of compassion – beyond self, beyond family, beyond nation – to encompass the entire planet. Grounded in an expansive reciprocity, interdependence, and care, Arborescence seeks to make space for both grief and hope in the face of ecological crisis.