Digging into the ground to collect soil became an unexpectedly intimate gesture. What began as a quiet, repetitive task revealed itself as an act of disturbance, removing the skin of the earth layer by layer. I started to think about the connection between this action and the compulsion of skin picking: both driven by an urge to reach beneath the surface, both rhythmic, and both unsettling in their intimacy. There’s a tension between care and harm in that kind of touch, between soothing and eroding.

At the end, I threw water across the surface. The pigment, dry and dormant, suddenly flared red, spreading in bursts that felt like heat or sting. It was both a moment of destruction and activation. The flush of color mirrored a bodily sensation: burning, tingling, the sharp bloom that follows pressure. The painting became a site of rupture and reaction, something that didn’t just hold material but remembered touch.

Crimson Earthscape

Crimson Earthscape

2024, Dirt, linen, watercolor powder, 70" x 44" 

Crimson Earthscape: Surface in Flux

Process documentation, 01:30