People ask me this a lot. And honestly, the answer changes depending on the day.
What I can say is this: every painting starts with something unfinished. A feeling I haven't sat with long enough. A question I'm still turning over. An experience that left a mark I haven't quite traced yet. Painting is how I slow down enough to listen to what's happening underneath everything.
I've always been drawn to the invisible parts of life. The emotions we carry quietly. The stories we tell ourselves in the middle of the night. The moments that change us completely, without anyone else even noticing. My work is an attempt to give those things a shape. Not to explain them, just to say: I see you. You're real.
When I'm in the studio, I'm not trying to paint a picture of something. I'm trying to capture what something feels like. Love. Grief. Balance. That strange space between who you were and who you're becoming. It doesn't always have a name. That's sort of the point.
Most pieces begin with a single thought that won't leave me alone. Sometimes it's a conversation I'm still processing. Sometimes it's a season of life I'm moving through. Sometimes it's just an emotion sitting heavy in my chest with nowhere to go. The canvas gives it somewhere to land.
What I love most about abstract work is that it stays open. Once a painting leaves my studio, it's no longer just mine. Someone else brings their whole life to it, their losses, their hope, their own quiet moments, and it becomes something I never could have made alone. A piece that feels like healing to one person might feel like courage, or homecoming, or release, to another. I think that's the most beautiful thing about it.
My titles usually come after the painting is finished. They're not labels. They're more like a soft hand on the shoulder: here, start here. And then the work takes you wherever you need to go.
I've never believed art needs to be understood to be felt. We feel things long before we have the words for them. I hope that when someone stands in front of one of my pieces, they feel permission to pause. To notice something in themselves that's been waiting quietly.
At its core, my work is about being human. The contradictions we hold. The beauty that shows up in the hard parts. The small, still moments that end up meaning everything.
Every painting is a conversation that begins with me and gets finished by you.
That's the part I live for.