Art direction is about creating believable worlds that draw the audience in. Sometimes it is more about taking things away than it is about adding elements that can distract.
My process is about projecting empathy in all directions, welcoming my collaborators and the audience with effective storytelling. I create images that combine the search for beauty with the search for truth, knowing that the search is neverending. Rather than embellish, I create powerful images that exalt in the beauty that already exists.
Growing as an artist demanded that I learn how to create every facet of constructing my images, including makeup, set design, costuming and lighting. That has made me more autonomous, but also a better collaborator. Having a clear understanding of every part of the process makes me more precise in the construction of my own language and the visual syntax for each image.
“you cannot tame something so happily wild”
―Emily Hughes, Wild
“Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.”
― Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
The making of a project on queer (sometimes fictional) Russian icons
Exceptional LGBTQ Canadians in arts and culture.
The making of an operatic project
“¡Oh! ¡Cuántas veces al reír se llora!
¡Nadie en lo alegre de una risa fíe,
porque en los seres que el dolor devora,
el alma llora cuando el rostro ríe! ”
― Juan de Dios Peza, Reír llorando