During the summer of 2018, I was overwhelmed with the discourse and aggression in the media, trying to find my voice in the noise and a way to tone down the negativity. I desperately wanted to express the idea of beauty in a non-beautiful time, which made me turn away from the figure. So I thought about the idea of contrast, of shimmering surfaces along side the rusted hard edges of barbed wire or the dried, fragile paper. I wanted to bridge the way towards something new, towards more abstraction, less obvious female references and away from representational motifs. I stepped into collage as a starting point, grabbing various detris around my studio space, using my glue gun on canvas and board. These first few pieces felt strange as I struggled with ideas that were less about my opinion and more about an intuitive response to the times. Most of these works began as exercises as I seek a series to sink my teeth into next.