Monochrome Reverie series (2024)

Artist Statement

Monochrome Reverie emerged from a period of profound emotional stillness, an unsettling quiet that concealed an undercurrent of tension. During this time, I felt caught between holding on and letting go, both personally and artistically. Working within a restrained palette of black and white became a language for that internal struggle. White embodied the peace I longed for, the stillness I could only access through making. Black represented the unease that lingered beneath, the restlessness that followed even my briefest moments of calm.

During that period, I was confronting depression, burnout, and creative exhaustion. Rather than resisting those feelings, I chose to move through them, to inhabit the greyness that seemed to envelop everything. Paradoxically, by limiting myself to black and white, I was rejecting that greyness altogether, living instead within extremes. The fragility of that binary, the inability to find space between light and dark, became integral to the work’s form and tone.

I often wonder if the black and white reflected a feeling of being lost at sea, distant from who I once was and uncertain of how to return. The self I used to know felt anchored on shore, while the version of me in process drifted in open water, disoriented and searching for direction. Yet within that disconnection, the act of creating offered moments of stillness, brief intervals of clarity and peace. White came to symbolize that sanctuary, while black carried the persistent, unanswered questions beneath the surface: What am I doing? Is this where I am meant to be? Am I happy? Who am I becoming?

This series holds the oscillation between safety and loss, calm and chaos, stillness and motion. It documents a threshold state where breaking apart and coming together occur simultaneously. Though it was born from pain and disorientation, the process was ultimately transformative. Monochrome Reverie stands as a mirror to that transformation, embodying the complexity of existing between polarities and the quiet resilience that arises in learning to hold them both.