Painting
acrylic, watercolor and oil, 2009-2024

From imaginary portraits to abstract landscapes, painting is a medium through which my inner worlds and internal processing of external events express themselves, and stories and characters emerge. For instance, I painted a portrait of a fictional "Afghan Boy" in 2009 during the US War in Afghanistan. The face is defined with dark lines and a frank gaze outward while he is suspended in a diffuse background of smokey shadow and poppies dripping like blood. In that moment, with a little patch of yellow hope in the righthand corner, his fate is still uncertain. Revisiting it now I think of other children in America and abroad for whom I wonder: If we play hide and seek enough you will survive. If I teach you to run can I keep you alive?  

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As we face conflict after conflict, challenge upon challenge, I hope we can draw inspiration and courage from those who walked before us. Walking together, in formation, in parades, in protest, has such a history. From suffragettes to anti-colonialists, Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter activists walk together in a surreal funeral procession atop a giant elephant, and I call us to focus not on mourning but remembrance. Meanwhile amidst the rubble of a destroyed city the last survivor, a lone dog, lifts their voice in a cry. Whoever is left we will not go silently.