ARTIST STATEMENT

      For me, I’ve been doing art as long as I can remember. Even as a child, I was always found with a pencil or marker in hand, furiously scribbling stick people and colorful monsters on a sheet of paper like no tomorrow. Ever since I started taking art seriously at the age of 11, I felt a true passion and a need to create. Never did I think I would get to the point I’m at today, and I’m grateful I stuck with it. For me, I create for many different reasons, the main one being quite personal. To put it simply, I create for myself. Using the inspiration gained by my interests, passions, and life experiences, I tell stories through both realistic and surrealistic artwork. 
      My creative process is a feverish one of jumbled idea fragments and messy sketches. Filtering through the many flashes of inspiration I have, I often find myself diving straight to my sketchbook, completing the ideas with scribbled concept sketches and sidenotes that seem to make sense to only me. Due to my need for perfection, many concepts stay just that: concepts. That's why I find it so necessary to accumulate multiple ideas in order to select the best of the best. From the concepts, I either find general reference photos for different elements, like my Play Your Roles series, or capture one myself, like my self portraits or my second installment in my Primary series, Girl in Red. Then, the creation process happens. In selecting media and techniques, I take into account the different aspects I want to add, such as how much color is needed, how saturated said color needs to be, and the overall mood I want the piece to display. My many techniques and medias of choice are all chosen specially, taking into account how I want the story of the piece to be told.
      When looking at my work now, it’s quite obvious that I enjoy drawing people, whether they be realistic or cartoon-like. A single glance at my beginning body of work would suggest otherwise, but I’m pleased with the dramatic shift in source material. At times, I just draw humans for the sake of enjoyment, but at other times, my pieces mean much more than that. Through the most subtle of changes, I can change the entire mood a person’s face can convey. By the smallest upturn of a lip corner, I can take a solemn piece to one of joy and overcoming adversity. Other times, my alterations are more extreme, more so with my surrealistic pieces. Through the application of minor and severe changes alike, I can convey emotional meaning as it presents itself to me personally. With every meaningful artwork I complete, I attempt to convey what I’m feeling through visual symbols and metaphors in order to uniquely convey the nuances of my personal attitude towards the subject.