I paint stories…..

My work lives at the intersection of portrait and figurative art, a space where faces hold memory, where paint becomes preservation, and where the act of looking closely at a person becomes an act of love. I am drawn to the stories that quietly slip away if no one stops to hold them, the lives half-remembered, the photographs left to fade, the voices that grow faint with time. My paintings are my refusal to let that happen.

Lately, my work has turned inward. I have been resurfacing old photographs and images from my own childhood, softened by time and beginning to disappear, and bringing them back to life through paint. It is a process that feels less like art-making and more like sifting through memories. Layer by layer, I am excavating my own story: the culture I was shaped by, the childhood I carry with me, and the long, winding search for my own place in the world. These are not always easy things to look at. But they are mine, and they deserve to be seen.

To move the story into the present, I weave self-portraiture into this body of work. I am not simply the keeper of these memories; I am also a part of them, changed by them, still unfolding because of them. The self-portrait is where past and present meet on the canvas.

And beyond my own story, I am compelled by the stories of others, the people who inspire me, whose lives have left a mark worth recording. I paint them with the same reverence I bring to my own history, because every face carries a legacy, and every legacy deserves a witness.

This is why I paint. To remember. To preserve. To ensure that the stories that matter, mine and those of the people I love and admire, are never allowed to simply fade away.