Motion

Movement speaks in a language I can’t translate, only follow—a quiet instinct that rises in the body before the mind can name it. When I move, something opens; when I draw, that same impulse slows into line, pressure, and breath. Performance never feels like pretending but revealing, a kind of peeling back. The sweep of an arm becomes a curve, the adrenaline before a drop becomes a smudge, the rhythm of weight shifting becomes the pacing of marks across a surface. Large-scale work simply makes this dialogue impossible to ignore; it pulls me in, asks me to circle, to respond, to treat the page as a partner rather than a tool. I never consciously merged movement and drawing—they found their way back to each other on their own, recognizing something shared in release, in urgency, in presence. Motion remains the truest way I understand myself, and the page is just another space I’m learning to move through. 

The inspiration for this piece began with my study of Heather Hansen, whose large-scale charcoal works merge movement, gesture, and the body. Building from her approach, I explored my own process using charcoal, gesso, and canvas. Much like her, I found myself working on the floor letting the material cover my hands, arms, and clothing as the physicality of drawing became part of the piece itself.

My background as an aerial dancer, which I’ve trained in since 2009, naturally wove itself into this process. As my worlds of performance and drawing started to merge, movement became mark-making, and mark-making became choreography. For this work, I layered five drawings (one created during each show) on top of eachother and adding gesso between layers to build depth and rhythm across the surface.

After the final performance layer, I brought the piece into the studio to refine details and prepare it for display. The result is both a record of motion and a reflection of how my performance practice continues to influence my 2D work.