My current work is an effort to find connection with past and present within the landscape, and a desire to bring visibility to a tribe that has experienced erasure for centuries. As a descendant of the Tongva of Los Angeles, living in the whir of traffic and asphalt, my weekly pilgrimages to the greenspace of Griffith Park are a pursuit of healing and effort to connect to the land. There is no word for nature in Tongva, which communicates a deep understanding of a symbiosis with nature we easily forget in contemporary society. My work has always referenced botanicals and native plants, and the new work references my Tongva roots and still speaks about living in Los Angeles. The oil paintings are an amalgamation of observances of moments in time with references to past simultaneously. My drawings are rendered from my own photographs, observing moments where natural and manmade collide. Chain link fences become metaphors for human impact amidst the resilience of nature, and speak of past and present simultaneously. I firmly believe there is healing in art and the natural environment where within a warp-speed society, we may still find rest.
