With roots in New York and the Netherlands, I am pursuing a double degree in Art and Political Science at UC Santa Barbara.
The act of drawing, in its most intuitive and repetitive form, insists upon slowing down. Just as water is tranquil in the absence of wind, the touch of pen on paper immediately quells the ripples of the mind. Within this state, I slowly piece together the fragments of a sequence, often using elaborate arches to separate the consecutive moments of a story. I aim to invite others to enter this space as well: to submerge themselves within my detailed environments and float among states of curiosity and wonder.
Lust, hunger, envy, joy. Everyone experiences the same world, but we respond to it quite differently. Folklore, of which a large portion of my practice stems from, serves as the infinite library of wisdom for understanding human experiences through a multitude of perspectives. Myths, fables, and folktales create a window into the values and beliefs of societies across history, delineating the geography we inhabit and defining our collective identities.
The imagination is a powerful form of truth-telling, often revealing emotional realities that evade fixed systems of logic. The Seven Daily Truths (2026) calls upon the experience of ‘awe’ as a secular ritual through which impulses once framed as sin are reconsidered as ordinary conditions of being human. In this case, the divergent lenses that dictate our definitions of moral hierarchies lose authority, and one is challenged to reevaluate their own interpretation of morality. Using fragments of my childhood stories and memories, I formed a collection of alternate interpretations of the “Seven Deadly Sins”, all of which are deeply intertwined with natural elements like flowers, animals, trees, stars, and clouds. While some of the plants and organisms captured within my drawings may not exist in this world, they serve as a mechanism by which to illuminate an intended truth. Folklore behaves in a similar way; it maintains a carrying velocity that generates the fluidity of transformation and reinterpretation.
I am particularly interested in how the body and mind navigate systems of control, and how socialized constraints, like gender, are reimagined and transformed through the lens of folklore. As contemporary society continues to condition a separation between the individual and mother nature, I look toward art as a time capsule that preserves the values and contradictions that define what it means to be alive in today's generation.
