Spills of War: Artist Statement

Spills of War is my way of creating order from a seemingly haphazard occurrence of coffee spilling on a page. 

During my process, I could feel my mind trying to control each illustration but forced myself to work with the directionless nature of the spills.  

The shapes of the spills allowed my mind to remove all boundaries and sense of censorship. The odd way that the coffee dried on the pages made me think of each line I drew in an abstract way.  It forced me to ignore representational depictions and each spill decided what it would be, allowing me to take certain risks and go places artistically that I wouldn’t have.

Spills of War speaks to the order, chaos, and boundaries we set on ourselves. The collection forced me to make the best of a seemingly bad situation of spilling coffee on a page. It forced me to create order out of chaos and I was able to remove the mental limits I placed on myself while creating . It did not matter if what I drew looked like something or meant something; all that mattered was the pure act of creation and reordering the chaos of each spill.