Meet Dee
Dee is an artist and writer working in Philadelphia. She received her BA in Philosophy and Studio Art from the University of Richmond, where she was awarded the Bobby Chandler Award in Art and became a member of the Philosophical Honor Society. She received her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she was the recipient of the Fine Arts Venture Fund. Dee has been a freelance designer and illustrator since 2014, creating web and social media content. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in NYC, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Antigua. Dee lives in South Jersey with her husband and newborn daughter.
My WorkI use drawing as a tool to navigate my thoughts. I work with ink on paper because paper is friendly and approachable. There is a satisfaction in the simple act of making marks on a physical page. A feeling that is increasingly void in the digital era of laptops and shared workspaces. My drawings are intimate, delicate, and detailed, and often paired with verse or prose. Images are paired with words, forms meld into each other, and together they create something greater than the sum of their parts.
In my work, I explore the human condition in a way that I hope is witty and approachable, but also startling and unnerving. I use inspiration from literature and culture to create a world where I can freely explore my ideas and my place in the world. It is an act of world-building, but it is also a form of archiving. An archive of ideas, feelings, and situations that make up what it’s like to live in the world. There are moments of extreme beauty and moments of extreme pain and isolation. Oftentimes, they meld together to create something uncertain and unsettling, and yet you can’t quite peel your eyes away.