LB—Where do you keep the skin?
SR—My good friend saved the skin from her pet snake and had it framed really nicely, but I actually just have it in a bag boxed under my bed. (laughs)
LB—And maybe you’ll return to using it in your work?
SR—yeah, maybe, it would make sense. Like a snake biting its own tail, the symbol of the ouroboros representing infinity and life cycles, shedding again and again and again.
LB—When was the last time you shed a skin? If you feel like you did...
SR—Hmmmm. Summer 2019 I think… It’s something I try to mentally prepare myself for as something that can always happen again, will happen, almost! To me, going through these depressed periods in life, that’s part of living. It can be all different kinds of events in your life. A relationship ending, or beginning…it always allows for you to see yourself in a different light. But also going through illness, minor or more severe, you can come out on the other side, resurrected, with new perspectives.
LB—So change can involve pain, or it can be painful in some way… to be blue, sad.. Does your blue relate to being blue…?
SR—yeah in some way, but blue is also uplifting to me! I relate it to happiness and fantasy too!
LB—So you transform the sad through blue!
SR—Yes! Owning the blues! Haha
LB—Thank you, a title for this interview! So, you go back in time a lot for inspiration in your work, what about the future?
SR—I don’t know, I very much live in the moment I think. Maybe when I go back 25 years from now I’ll realize that a motif I’ve drawn is actually myself. A human morphed with an animal or something, and then I’ll be like, “oh, that’s actually me!”
LB—Do you do self portraits?
SR—I use myself in some drawings, or parts of my body…
LB—Do you use yourself in your work in other ways?
SR—I like building universes, mixing real life with my drawings, and creating stories. With the thorns on my hands I imagine a new body, a new way of looking at your body. Outgrowths.