My oil paintings explore psychological oppositions and the existential struggle of bringing them together. The coexistence of love and pain or divinity and mundanity in the mind are common subjects in my work. My visual language moves between heavy illusionism and expressive mark making. I apply many layers of paint to evoke the depth and density of the mind. As an aspiring Tibetan Buddhist practitioner, I am constantly contemplating impermanence. These sobering meditations often serve as the inspiration behind my work. Religious and spiritual tropes imbue my images with allegorical meanings. Recently, my paintings have focused on tragedy and our response to tragedy. In Baroque-inspired pieces I grieved our mortality and geopolitical war. Additionally, I considered how we cope with these conditions. Influenced by the texts of philosopher Byung-Chul Han, I investigate how secluded the modern subject has become, and the importance of spaciousness and play. My works have been greatly inspired by my time abroad in Florence. For four months, I traveled throughout Europe to discover how the master’s understood the project of art making. I am currently working on a series of paintings on Brooklyn nostalgia and a longing for the Caribbean. Through vignettes from my childhood, I aim to bridge these two cultural worlds together.