Artist Statement

Trees fascinate me because they expose painting's fundamental problem. Here I stand with my brush before beings that neither ask for our understanding nor offer kinship, yet fundamentally shape how we see the world. Every attempt to paint them reveals the boundary between human perception and nonhuman reality - a boundary central to both posthumanist philosophy and painting's crisis in the Anthropocene.

My practice investigates what happens when watercolor meets this impossibility. The medium bleeds, separates, and resists control in ways that mirror trees' own resistance to representation. I have chosen watercolor as my only medium not despite but because of this instability. Its granulation, unpredictable flow, and chemical processes become co-creators of something neither I nor the tree could produce alone.

Simultaneously, I study the medium with scientific rigor - its complex material interactions, pigment sedimentation, capillary effects. This creates a methodological tension at the heart of my practice. On one hand, I seek understanding and control through science; on the other, I try to let the material "speak" through posthumanist listening. But both positions are deeply human choices. I cannot avoid being the one who observes, chooses, interprets.

Rather than hiding this paradox between posthumanistic theory and actual practice, I make it visible. My scientific knowledge becomes both an instrument of control and a way of recognizing material forces beyond my control. The painting becomes a site where my intention meets watercolor's chemical logic and trees' visual complexity - an encounter none of us can fully govern.

This practice of critical entanglement is my response to painting's problematic position in the Anthropocene. I seek neither purity from painting's colonial history nor romantic escape to "natural" art. Instead, I work within the contamination - aware of my medium's limitations but also its unique capacity to materialize the tensions that define our time. The result is paintings that do not speak for trees but meaningfully fail to do so. This failure becomes a form of attention - a way of staying present with what exceeds our grasp while acknowledging the boundaries of our understanding.