T!
ALLEN

My work is a visual representation of my environment—what I see, what I absorb, and what it feels like for me to move through the world around other people.

I use art to process things I don’t always know how to put into words. The paintings carry pieces of relationships, surroundings, memory, loss, anxiety, humor, love, and whatever else happens to be living in my head at the time.

A lot of the work comes from mourning losses—not only people, but places, relationships, periods of life, and versions of ourselves that don’t exist anymore. I don’t necessarily sit down intending to paint those things. They find their way into the work.

That’s part of why the paintings can be crowded. Eyes, hands, hearts, plants, mushrooms, faces, lines and shapes overlap and compete for space. To me, that feels closer to actual life than a perfectly organized picture does.

But the work isn’t supposed to be hopeless. Even when something comes from grief or discomfort, I’m usually looking for the good somewhere inside it. The bright colors matter. The humor matters. The strange little characters matter. There can be something beautiful, funny, or worth holding onto even when everything around it feels chaotic.

I don’t paint to escape my environment.

I paint what it feels like to be inside it.