Laguna College of Art + Design

My current body of work explores notions of mortality, vulnerability, loss, and survival. Over the last decades, these ideas have shaped my emotional landscape and have led to an investigation of the psychological and physiological circumstances tha…

Holding Still and Letting Go captures powerful personal emotions and intimate experiences and transforms them symbolically as universal expressions for the human condition. The themes in this collection are based on two profound periods—during…

My artwork often reflects an inner world that can be described as “Synthetic Realism.” Robert McKee, a former art professor at Yale University, used the label to loosely describe a form of art that although rooted in realism, manipulates…

The subjects of my work are portraits of myself and people that I know, and still lifes composed of objects that have relevance to the individuals in the portraits. My purpose is simple yet challenging: to promote, through careful observation, an ho…

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 forgivene…

My work defines and explores the concept of floral life-cycles as a metaphor for human existence. I draw inspiration from my personal garden, which I cultivate for research purposes, as well as other natural spaces. This closeness to floral life-cyc…

Artistic evolution is highly personal and unique for each person. As a formally trained illustrator, I’m intrinsically afraid of change and desperately hold onto processes that feel familiar. However, I know that growth is full of risks and un…

Passive-Aggressive is a series of six drawings and six paintings that focus on voyeurism and repressed male fantasies. It should also be seen as a kind of visual diary that records two years of struggle, trial and error in a post-graduate painting p…

I think of my paintings as an extension of street photography. The photograph has had a long-standing tradition of being at war with the painting world; however, I found that it is used in my work beyond the traditional means of reference, and is so…

The culmination of this body of works is centered on my experiences. The paintings of this series follow the story of my life at this time in the past and the present. I want to depict places and people that mark a specific time and place in my life…

Steven Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, in The Grand Design, coined the term “model-dependent realism”, claiming that everything we know about reality is from observations based on models. They believe that different world picture models pr…

Our ethics, logic, and aesthetics are highly dependent on the environment to which we belong. In one community such as a country, family, ethnicity, or generation, people may hold beliefs that feel like “common sense” to the people who b…

My experiences, memories, dreams, and ideas are externalized and made lyrical through my oil paintings on canvas. I respond to motifs and subjects from art history, and this body of work is especially informed by the Baroque period and artists inclu…

Finding beauty in ordinary objects excites me. In each still life, I use ordinary vessels as my subject matter. I paint them in oil in a classical and traditional style. I use ceramic vessels in Oriental and simple design because they helps to creat…

I Remember. I Remember – the scent on my mother carries love and comfort. Even though she is not physically with me, her blessing and love stay with me in my memories. Losing my mother is the trigger for me to paint my memories. I experienced …

The formal elements of my work respond to conflicting visual dualities in water. Water is a substance that can be both transparent and opaque. It allows its mysteries to stay hidden, or to loom eerily beneath its glassy surface. Realism defines thes…

Growing up in the Mormon religion, I had the unusual experience of being taught about a female deity. While many Mormon women find the idea of a female deity empowering, some are disturbed that she is nearly invisible within Mormon religious discour…

I am currently making paintings of the guys I know and love and like to look at, using bits and pieces of the commercial imagery we're all constantly bombarded with via TV, movies, magazines, the Internet, billboards, and even iPhone apps. There is …