Making art has always been how I connect with things I found beautiful. As I grow older, I make art to highlight the powerful things I feel need to be said. I am an avid reader, and what I always tell people when they ask me what I read is that I like books that make me think. The best art, to me, does the same thing: it makes you think and keeps you interested. To this end, I strive to be in a state of constant learning, broadening my skillset in order to expand how I think about and practice my art. I like to try to capture the beauty of the soul of things, and I find massive inspiration in the grace and beauty of nature. Nature inspires much of my work, including my thoughts on removing human control in a sort of Surrealist idea of unleashing more organic expressions that mimic how things occur in nature; the dichotomy between randomness and intelligence.

When I make work geared towards the viewer, I think in questions. I think of how I can make others ask questions and consider politics, philosophy, and other concepts more deeply or in a different light than perhaps they thought before. I think my use of so many different mediums and methods lends itself to this process. It creates endless possibilities for expressing thoughts, connecting with viewers, and asking questions—both of myself and of others. But to accomplish this, there needs to be a translation of ideas. This can mean multiple things, from how I translate my ideas to be understood by viewers, but also how I think more abstractly about language and communication themselves. I use translation as a way to create replications, not of nature as in realistic art, but of my mind and imagination. I make the invisible images and thoughts in my mind visible to the public, almost as an indirect way of having deeper, often nonverbal, conversations with others. I’ve always wanted to invite others into the way I see the world—sometimes with the purpose of showing them the beauty I see, but also as a method of provoking critical thought and the asking of tough questions. Other times, the purpose is to bare my heart and soul with raw honesty, reflecting the inside of my head—the feelings of going crazy with grief, saying the same things over and over again, stuck inside an emotional loop of pain; a never-ending cycle of thoughts that lead nowhere. I do not believe in narrowing my practice to singular themes or media. I think true artistic potential is born from unbounded creativity. This is the space where I can say what I think, feel, and see.