sure that I'll be able to pull it off. I really have to fight my way through the beginning stages - the ‘ugly’ phase as I like to call it - where I’m just building in the layers of the image. Once I get to the stage where it starts to come together and to look the way I envisioned it in my head, I feel a really strong connection to my Creator, because I often have no idea how I got there. I have to chalk it up to divine inspiration, because there’s no other way of explaining it.
For this particular body of work, I knew I wanted to create pieces that carried nostalgia. I think that the meaning behind my work usually solidifies more after I’ve completed a piece. Jim Carrey said “I often don’t know what I’m painting until about a year later in therapy” and that’s exactly how I feel with my paintings. The themes in my work come forward the more I sit with a completed piece and stare at it. At the beginning, I worried that these pieces didn’t necessarily ‘go together’ in a way that made a ton of visual sense – but so far I am pretty happy with what’s come of it. I plan to continue this series to see where it takes me.

Themes in my work:
Gender, race, color, culture, food, labels, the past/the passed, history, family