I am self taught and mainly work with female portraits in acrylic, ink, watercolor, where I explore the relationship between figure, color, feeling. My subjects often come from a simple impulse to capture something I find beautiful, a face, a mood, rather than trying to communicate a fixed idea.

I draw and paint women, which I think is rooted in growing up with a single mother and becoming aware early of both their strength and vulnerability. For a period of time we lived in a women’s shelter, and that experience has certainly shaped how I understand safety and closeness. Drawing has become a way for me to process this, not by depicting trauma, but by creating images of calm, warmth and presence.

I often work with contrasts, soft faces against strong blocks of color, dreamlike expressions within clear compositions. Somewhere in that balance the work feels most alive to me.