I am a painter inspired heavily by color and place! I draw a lot of my inspiration from themes in anthropology, exploration, color philosophy, and fauvism. I’ve been painting for the vast majority of my life, earning my BFA in Studio Art in 2024 with a plan to pursue an MFA in the next few years. A commonality you’ll see in my paintings is vibrant colors with heavy contrasts, lots of complementaries, and twists on traditional themes. Color carries cultural meaning, and I am interested in how those meanings shift from place to place. My work explores these differences while allowing me to develop my own visual interpretation of each environment, whether it’s from home or a place far away. In a way, I want to redefine how we interpret color in art, as well as pushing back against the idea of what it means to be a “traditional” painter in a contemporary world. Often times a lot of young artists, myself included, grew up on the notion that good art is art that depicts a scene with as much realism as possible. As I got older and started experimenting, and then studying the practice, I learned that there is no such thing as one kind of art being better than another! Art is what you make of it. There is no formula to determine what is good versus bad. That’s why I’m interested in exploring color in nontraditional ways while exploring traditional themes in my work.