Artist’s Statement

I started painting during COVID lockdown as a way to fill the silence. What began as killing time became a compulsion. I painted over 400 pieces in a few years, teaching myself through experimentation and repetition. I live for the process.

My work is about memory, identity, and trying to hold onto things that won't stay still. I'm drawn to specific places and not just the postcard version, but the view from the bed, the light filtering through ruins, that particular spot that stuck with me. There's something about trying to capture moments that are already becoming memories while you're still inside them. They're about preserving something that doesn't photograph right: how a place feels at a specific moment, what it means when culture gets passed down through imperfect hands, the quality of afternoon light that makes you think "I need to remember this." The practice becomes as much about understanding my relationship to these spaces as it is about getting them down on paper or canvas.

At the end of the day, this is work about reflection and paying attention. To what's in front of me, to the places that keep mattering, to how identity gets built from years of looking at things closely. Memory shifts and amplifies certain details while others disappear. Painting becomes a way to pin something down long enough to ask what it meant then, what it means now, and to acknowledge those might be two different answers.