Artist Statement

 

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           My mixed media sculptures examine life through the lens of vulnerability, awkwardness, and discomfort, focusing on the unsettling feeling of exposing raw, unguarded parts of myself. While I recognize that flaws, weakness, and imperfection are essential aspects of being human, I often struggle with the fear and anxiety that come with showing those parts openly. Creating work that appears emotionally bare challenges me to confront my own discomfort with being seen in a vulnerable state.

         Through strange and uneasy interactions between biomorphic ceramic forms and fragments of domestic space, I create visual metaphors for internal conflict. These combinations provoke tension—between softness and rigidity, balance and imbalance—and mirror the emotional contradictions I carry. The discomfort embedded in these works reflects memories, anxieties, and the lasting residue of emotional suppression.

         The sculptures reference the body in subtle, often intimate ways. I see the ceramic forms as extensions of myself—blobby, awkward, sometimes collapsing under their own weight. Their uncertain structure and fragile surfaces mirror my own inner tension between wanting to express emotion and wanting to stay protected. I use form, texture, and spatial relationships to amplify discomfort and to question what it means to be emotionally open in a world that often discourages it.

 

                                    -R.J. Sturgess