As a contemporary momento mori artist, I create art to remind myself and others that we are all going to die. Me. You. Everyone you care about. This seems obvious, and yet the fear of death, which haunts the human race like nothing else, inspires us to go to great lengths to pretend it isn’t true. We all use intricate compartmentalization, determined distraction, and heroic ego building to deflect our dread of non-existence. I find this fascinating. The greater the discomfort, the more complex and rich the subject, and the more I want to probe that uncomfortable spot.

Because people usually prefer to pretend death doesn’t involve them, I use a combination of beauty, mystery, and high levels of craft to lure them into a conversation between my art and their mortality. My work is slow and labor intensive, and I regard it as a form of meditation practice. I draw life-sized doomed horses dropping from great heights. I photograph myself tenderly touching the animal dead. I sculpt two-headed stags to show the conjoined twins Love and Loss and draw the eyes of dear ones that appear and disappear like magic, like ghosts. I have drawn dead fawns to explore the vulnerability of parenthood, and I painted my son as a drowned boy because I needed to understand the worst of what love has to offer. All of these works have brought me incredibly fulfilling and life-affirming engagements with strangers and friends. There is a deep thirst for conversations that are Real, and the purpose of momento mori is to be the catalyst for those conversations. This is how we remember our connection to each other and the world writ large. How bittersweet that life means more because it ends. We fear death. And we need death.