I identify as a Darwinian feminist: someone who does not fear nature, but sees it as a source of deep truth and inspiration. My work draws on neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology as they intersect with lived experience, and is grounded in the belief that adaptability is among our most powerful tools.

Through the lens of science, I have been able not only to see the distinction between personal motives and those born of inherited survival strategies, but also to uncover patterns of adaptation linking us all to the long story of Us, Homo Sapiens.

I see humans as starting with a unique configuration of elastic capacities, biologically-formed and environmentally-tuned. Consistency, stimulation, exposure, perception and variability all affect how experience is absorbed and organized, creating a self-updating feedback loop in which behavioral strategies are tested, reinforced, or reviewed based on efficiency. 

My artwork seeks to reflect that loop and give visual form to the forces shaping behavior. I’m drawn to the tension among competing needs, internal limits, and social demands; and the invisible priority metrics impacting decision making. My aim is to depict these patterns in such a way that viewers might recognize them in themselves and in others, and to see those patterns not as flaws but as information and potential. 

Cristina David (she/hers) has been oil painting since the age of twelve, and has always had an interest in psychology and earth’s many species. A born naturalist Cristina used to collect bugs, and during her middle school recess’s would opt to spend hours drawing animals, page by page from the library’s animal encyclopedia. Her love of art would continue through-out college where she graduated Carnegie Mellon University with a BFA in Fine Art, and throughout the years she spent as a disaster relief worker for All Hands Volunteers, (now all hands and hearts) both in the states and abroad, leading her to art therapy. Psychology and art merge together in Cristina's creative process, yeilding work that both explores her values and records them. Her current body of work is what she is referring to as the start of her oeuvre and it is titled, Origin.

Annie Clemmons graduated from Guilford College with a Visual Arts degree in 2020. During their college career she participated and helped curate art shows and events every semester. This led her to finish her college career as an Art Thesis Student. Their art thesis explored anxieties about disease, illness, and contamination. Challenging herself to confront her fears were and still is a part of her creative process. Inspired by the microbiology found looking through microscopes, Annie occasionally highlights a cell or protein that sources invisible illness and disease. Having one themself and knowing others who do, watching them push through each day, inspires her to learn and create their version of invisible disease. Annie associates their use of color and texture with the importance of those invisible hardships not going unnoticed. Annie hopes that visualizing the internal working of self will help viewers understand their own complexities. The self changes constantly, the cells in our bodies die and recycle every second. We are not one thing. We are many things all at one time. Some of us are struggling, surviving, thriving, living everyday invisible to those around us. At our core, we are all a collection of microbes. Annie herself creates art to demand to be seen. Annie Clemmons is one half of Helen and Pearl, A joint art shop selling original works, collaborative pieces, prints, stickers, and more.