This was one of the pieces I had on display in a group art show in New York. I talked to many people, heard many interpretations.

But one that I think about all the time to this day is an elderly woman who did not speak english. Her son translated for her. I dont remember the exact words but he told me she saw her younger self in the painting and saw it as the pain of being a woman. she had tears in her eyes.

it is htings like this. that make everyhting worth it. all the pain. all the hours spent creating compositions and rendering details. it wasnt the show. it was the opportunity the show created for connections to be made.

I share this because of what it showed me. I spend a majority of my waking hours creating things that communicate something words never could. this experience showed me I wasnt creating into a void. i didnt feel seen. so i made myself visibile and in making myself visible, i made someone else feel seen.

in that moment we understood eachother. despite being generations apart and not speaking the same language. she doesnt know my story, i dont know hers. but thats why i paint. its not the details of the events. its why it haunts you. its the feeling of what happened. and infusing that into a single image made up of brush strokes. all the years i spent developing my craft was worht it in that moment.

I made this piece a year after I was hospitalized at 16 years old. fun fact, this piece is somewhat of a self portrait of the version of me only a few weeks after i posed for this photo with my first piece ever displayed in a museum exhibit. One of my biggest accomplishments at that time

It was too traumatic to make a piece about immediately. The whole time i was in that hospital I got through it by imagining how i would express it through my art. Everything all at once that led me to being in that hospital. every detail is intentional. the composition is chaotic and packed , reflecting where i was. in a place with a environment that was so plain and empty, but thats why i paint. to show what can’t be seen.

the thing about being suicidal, for me, is that its something that never fully goes away. I made this at 16, about half a year later, when I hit my rockiest bottom.

You would think the experience in this painting wouldve been the rock bottom? nope. It got worse. I wanted to kill myself again. all the feelings i had in this painting came back. I left everything behind. everything i thought i needed to get where i wanted to go. everything i was holding onto. The decisions i made when I no longer feared death , yet chose not to seek it out, were the decisions that actuallly turned my life around and led me to creating a life I cherish.

exploring my own psyche