Watercolor is both my activism and my resilient act. Pigment billows beyond the confines of measured strokes. Joy mingles with chaos, capturing fleeting moments. Narratives captivate me, and I find that a painting can disarm us in a way that we truly hear the lived experience of someone else's story. When I paint a portrait, the muse’s story is just as important as any reference image.

Watercolor

Watercolor is my attempt to compartmentalize chaos. By painting on Aquabord, a clay panel, I capture precise details in my portraits contrasted with the final layers which bloom from poured paint and test the limits of my control on the painting. As a figurative realist painter, I am captivated by portraiture and the narratives of the subjects in my paintings. Artist, Amy Sherald, illustrated this sentiment beautifully on the podcast Small Doses with Amanda Seales: “It takes life to make work. If you want it to be important, if you want to be sophisticated, if you want to tell a story, whatever you want to speak to, it takes life in order to make good work. Otherwise, you might be just pushing paint around…If you want to be an artist…It’s about connecting to a narrative.”