In my studio practice, everything ultimately leads back to my artistic foundation: painting. I fluidly navigate between paint, mixed media, and photography, deeply guided by Maggi Hambling’s philosophy to 'make everything an experiment, otherwise it's dead.' For me, this is a mandate to prioritize play, curiosity, and continuous evolution. Nothing in my studio remains static; my process is a constant dialogue with materials, literature, and life. I maintain a painter's touch across all mediums, interchangeably layering oil paint, watercolor, inks, fluid acrylics, and high-flow acrylics, while pulling in mark-making tools like markers, colored pencils, and water-soluble crayons.

I draw heavy inspiration from artists like Kiki Smith, Willem de Kooning, Frida Kahlo, and Elizabeth Murray. De Kooning’s experimental use of materials, color, and composition, alongside Murray’s bold, structural paintings, challenge me to see beyond the optical—to create with my entire body and mind. Kahlo, who famously channeled her physical trauma into profound visual narratives, serves as a vital blueprint for working through physical limitation. My abstract work demands that I surrender to the process rather than fixate on the final product, allowing the act of creation to heal and restore me. Abstract art requires no rigid definition; it can simply be me in the studio.

In her memoir Hold Still, Sally Mann wrote, 'I see both beauty and the dark side of things... the loveliness of cornfields and full sails, but the ruin as well.' This duality resonates with my own experience navigating chronic illness, specifically Common Variable Immune Deficiency (CVID). In series like Invisible Disabilities, I explore the beauty and vulnerability inherent in my condition. My practice is inherently therapeutic—an essential outlet for the emotional burdens of chronic illness. Remarkably, my weekly, hours-long home infusion treatments have transformed into designated studio time, where artmaking literally expands the boundaries of time. Alongside these personal narratives, my work encompasses landscapes, abstract compositions, and the human form, searching—much like Mann—for a raw connection to the world around me.

Ultimately, my work explores and questions the inner self. When I step up to a canvas, a sketchbook, or a piece of watercolor paper, it is a visceral, emotional, and personal reaction to the world. The physical way my body responds to the materials—the behavior of color, paint, pencil, and mediums—tells the story of what is inside me. A painting, like a human, must have a history. It must have layers that peek through one another, layers that mature, traumatize, or texturize the surface, and, hopefully, layers that heal. Each piece becomes a part of me. The beauty of abstraction is that it does not attempt to depict just one thing, but all things. It questions who I am, what I want to reveal, and what my body, mind, or heart needs to pour out. By chasing that total sensation of release in every painting, I am constantly exploring what lies on the surface, and what lies deeper—questions that keep both the work and life exciting.