My approach to painting is an equally intimate and physically consuming process of making, though the work itself can be seemingly bare and minimalist. I am fascinated by the materiality and properties of paint—its manipulation with outside influences, or lack thereof, within a work. The content of my artwork— abstracted bleeds, clots, rings, cracks, and rippling wave forms—aims to recall relationships between bodies, biology, and race. In my work, I look to the diversity of humanity for connections between our constantly shifting definitions of otherness, race, and belonging. Using a color palette of skin tones, I paint to create portraits of diversity that blur the lines of figuration and non-representation. Foregoing the artist's’ brush to push and pull color, I manipulate the paint by moving the clay board, paper, or ceramic with my own hands, watching for—rather than forcing—reactions and catching and re-distributing the movement and placement of color to build layers over time. The result is the revealing of a history, a landscape of buildup, erosion, stoppage, and careening through the archive of the paint’s movement as a reaction to my body.