Midway- Spring 2026
My current body of work is a series of drawings combining elements of traditional religious iconic portraiture with transferred digital images in order to construct a contemporary iteration of an iconic image. These drawings explore various elements of traditional icons, expressing narrative, identity and history, and the creation of the devotional image. Like in traditional iconic work, I focus on communicating the intention and process of granting a certain quality to a work of art like the ‘holiness’ of an icon through symbols and evoking empathy. The Martyr St. George of Damascus is an icon portrait of the martyred George of Damascus, a story from the Laodicean manuscript of the Arabic Menologion telling of the killing of an enslaved George of Damascus for refusing to practice his master’s religion. These narratives serve as a foundation for me to inject my perspective and visual interpretation and explore the boundaries of presenting a traditional form in a modern context. Image transfers allow me to inject a digital image directly into that narrative, blending in additional context and tension as more information and history accumulates and is refined by my hand. As a screen printer outside of my art practice, I take inspiration from the work of printmakers in my community and the diversity of practice among them, pushing myself to exploit the limitations of my media. Artifacts of the gel transfer leave surface imperfections and holes where stained red wood is visible through an image of a solar eclipse, forming a halo behind the saint. I will intentionally remove layers of paint and paper with sandpaper, working forwards and backwards, allowing older layers and contexts to surface and shift the visible history within the piece. Rubbing and sanding the panel lends an involved physicality to altering the surface, while rendering a figure in colored pencil demands patience and a light touch. The work is complete when balance is struck between adding and removing, careful rendering and haphazard texture-making, digital and traditional, the piece sits on the balance between the visible hand and the mechanically altered. My intention is not to obscure the medium beyond the point of recognition, but the ambiguity invites a closer look and an intimacy that my work requires.