Tess Bilhartz draws on fantasy, sci-fi, and horror as containers for extreme or hidden feeling, layering symbols — monstrous teeth, distorted shadows, alien handprints — with paint and pencil until images embody tangled interior states. Her deliberately confounding compositions use cropping, transparency, and ambiguity to suggest that visible reality conceals hidden currents beneath. What caused that impression in the sand? Whose hand rests on the rock? The irresolution mirrors an interior life of conflicting emotions and unfixed boundaries.
