Laguna College of Art + Design

I address the range of human experience and emotion in watercolor paintings.

Watercolor, much like emotions, is unpredictable and requires special care to harness its

infinitely varied and nuanced complexities. Creating such works requires forgiveness in how

water and pigment interact, as well as the physical manifestation of subjective experience.

These emotional paintings express topics ranging from gender and cultural identity, to

mundane life experience. Vulnerability and empathy are required to portray hardship and loss

in a manner that honors humanity’s lived experience. Working beyond the boundaries

codified by narrative realism, this work seeks to offer a glimpse into the realm of the

unknown. My primary themes focus on aspirations, secrets, and dreamlike qualities. For this

reason, I call my work ethereal realism. These fleeting moments of inspiration, while difficult

to grasp and attuned to distant memories, are fortified through an improvisational painting

process. Using subtle symbolism in relation to nature and soft feminine figures, I invite the

audience into an alternate space where trauma can be healed, and compassion takes hold. The

paintings also make use of negative space, so that viewers can insert themselves in the

paintings and infer what might lie beyond humanity. This work does not merely paint a

picture of melancholy but opens a window to the divine.