An Ordinary Day 2018
Drawing From the Ostracized World

For the past three years, I have lived with and survived aside from the overlooked, misunderstood, and ostracized. In multiple nations around the world, I watched people during the most difficult times of their lives struggle with their own anxiety, frustration, and anger. How does one find themselves within the world? What does this speak to the human condition? How can witnessing such an experience help affect change and a new perspective in the lives of the rest of us? Looking inversely at my own experiences, and how I embrace and reflect upon the world, the questions that grew increasingly concerning surrounded art. What is art? What makes a painting a painting? How is it possible to find a balance between visualization and context? How will the artwork I create fit within the global conversation, or within the timeline of art during our civilization?

An Ordinary Day
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In Bangladesh, refugees represent some of the longest historically displaced populations of modern-day. Working closely with these people as both a psychotherapist and art therapist, I had formulated a direction of my own work after following their daily lives. This exhibit titled “An Ordinary Day” is meant to encapsulate the rigor, harshness, and dramatic emotional landscapes that face these people as they survive; while also recognizing the disparaging discrepancy of experience between the two worlds of the viewer and the subject. My paintings are an attempt to convey the unique atmosphere of the human condition that couldn’t otherwise be captured through photography alone.

Behind the Brush
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As an abstract painter, I’m most driven to explore the contemporary state of our world, and the diversity of culture, through the trials of those who that society and culture reject. This juxtaposition highlights our deep-rooted desire to survive, which is exhibited in the willpower of the individuals I spend time with around the world; people forgotten by nations but who refuse to succumb to the harshness of extreme living environments.