Fine Art

36" x 48"

Acrylic on Canvas

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Magic happens in the kitchen. It’s a place of transformation, a place of metamorphosis, a place of creation. For this painting I was most inspired by the idea of change. Cooking is about putting separate things together in order to get a different product. For example, to make brownies one combines the individual ingredients of eggs, brownie mix, water, and oil into a bowl and when stirred it becomes a thick brown batter. No more eggs, no more water, no more oil. Then after the batter goes into the oven, it becomes what we call a brownie. For my painting I wanted to communicate this change by using color. I created different colored stripes that when overlapped with other colors, they become different.

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2" x 3"

Graphite, Charcoal

18' x 24'"

Acrylic on Canvas

36" x 48"

Acrylic on Canvas

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Borders are personal boundaries people put up that keep them separate from other people around them. Gender, class, and race are used to divide and create these types of borders. People are content just to go about their individual journeys and to never cross these divisions. But, it’s when we do intersect paths with other people that we flourish. When I reflected on how to communicate this idea, I was inspired by raindrops landing on a widow and being pulled down by gravity to create stripes of negative space. Growing up, I used to watch raindrops race against each other down the window. The more the raindrop would travel, the heavier and faster it would become due to combining with others who had made their own individual paths seconds before. Just like the raindrops landing on the window, we as people need to intersect and cross personal divisions we put in place in order for us to live well. Journeying by ourselves will tire us out and deplete us of our energy. For my painting, I recreated this idea by watering down acrylic paint and dripping it across the surface. Each drop would mimic the raindrops on the window and travel individually across. But, when it would reach a path paved by anther drip, it would combine into one stripe and it would disregard the previous plan it had. My final result is a map of individual journeys that the paint drips made interacting with others.

48" x 48"

Acrylic on Canvas

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This painting represents the moment when you're holding in your tears, barely managing to hide your emotions. But then someone notices you and asks about what's bothering you. This simple act of noticing opens the floodgates of emotions and you can no longer contain your tears. A sloppy and beautiful moment between someone feeling and someone paying attention. 

36" x 48"

Graphite on Paper

48" x 36"

Acrylic on Canvas

Dorina Tamblyn is a single mother of three children and a grandmother to 13 grandchildren. She has been through divorce, death, and health issues but she has always been a constant in my life.  I wanted her to be the subject of my painting “Dorina” because of the constant strength and love she pours out. My grandmother has a gentle but giant love for her family, and I wanted to paint her in an environment that communicates who she is. In this painting, Dorina is sitting at her kitchen table which has held decades of home-cooked meals for children, grandchildren, and friends. She is pictured reading a devotional book which she often returns to with a mug of black coffee. I have so many memories of finding her in this same position early in the morning, dedicating her day to the Lord. Another subject of this painting are the decorations hung on the wall in the background. These have been hanging in the same place on the wall my whole life which has become a part of my memories with my grandmother. Dorina isn’t worried about change or about refreshing her home with new décor, but she keeps things the way they have been. The final part of this painting is specifically the gold plaque that reads “Delight thyself in the Lord and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart” from Psalm 37:4. From observing my grandmother over the years, I can without hesitation that she delighted in the Lord. Whatever it was, she found a way to keep her head above the waters and not be pulled under by this world.

36" x 48"

Acrylic on Canvas

Folds is about the beautiful folds of skin. The overlapping and varying depths create shadows and highlights. 

36" x 48"

Acrylic on Canvas

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When I pondered on my final painting of my university career, I wanted to make the best painting of my semester. I put so much pressure on producing a final painting that embodied all of the mixed emotions I have about finishing University that I froze. I was paralyzed by this desire for an incredibly deep message that I literally couldn’t push past. Finally, I decided to put away this need for meaning and to just paint. So what if I have to start over? This is the end result of my “just starting” and to me it represents growth in my personal artistic journey. Being able to recognize myself as an artist and being able to make mistakes as an artist. I found so much freedom in letting this weight of having a perfect painting go. Instead of putting so much pressure on an initial concept, as an artist I have freedom to make mistakes with my art. I have freedom to just paint and see what comes from it.

In the end, this painting reminds me of a vacuum seal bag full of my emotions from this month. There is so much pressure built up in that plastic that if it rips, the air would go rushing in and would release the contents back to its original shape. For this painting, I was able to contain the pressure just like a vacuum bag and I hope to carry this with me in my art practice after school.

12" x 18"