I like to describe myself as a multimedia artist. The exploration and experimentation of different materials constantly draws me in. As a maker I like getting my hands dirty, literally and figuratively, I feel as though I can illustrate an idea more clearly when I become immersed into the materials themselves. I once scavenged around my backyard as a 6 year old, to find all different types of mushrooms, flowers and berries to explore their print and intensity of color when transferred to paper. Painting, as a medium and a practice, I use inherently almost every time I sit down to work. It has become a grounded personality, a primary mindset that I apply to other disciplines because painting reads so personally to me. The freedom of color and the fluid malleability of material can easily allow for vivid description of the idea as well as its texture. Following organic, systematic rules from nature is a way I tend to go about creating my abstract textures through painting, ceramics, printmaking, collaging, machine knitting, and sculpting. Nature has a way of influencing my work because my best memories of my childhood were all outside; collecting mushrooms, building fairy houses and using the back yard as my painting studio. I love to visualize my ideas using this intuitive process of building up textures and colors to find their individual relationships and convey emotions. Instinctively, this is why I love combining patterns and creating textures in fashion. Studying apparel design at the Rhode Island School of Design taught me not just to design and make clothes, but to challenge society?s view on clothing; to invent fashion that could speak in more ways than one. Fashion opened up my world into the idea of making art that has a dynamic longevity while having a personal connection to the user. I believe it is important as an artist to create work that uses the language of my surroundings, in order for the work to be relatable and speak the loudest.