After that performance, I was exhausted. Having been accustomed to keeping my emotions to a minimum, this act of defiance took a lot of out of me. For the next few years, I kept trying to return to the metaphor of landscape with varying results. I became reluctant to confront the pain that was bubbling beneath the surface. This reluctance showed in my work.

When I moved to New York in 2013, the intensity of the city forced my hand: I had to deal with my immediate anxieties and continue to sort through my trauma and grief. I developed an isolated, meditative practice, in which I laid out huge pieces of canvas on my bedroom floor and marked them to oblivion with charcoal and pastels. The calm that I achieved from such physical, repetitive work was absolutely necessary to my survival in the city.