Artistic Statement

My art is a conversation with absence, colour, and the quiet parts of myself that only show up when the world is still.

After my father passed, something shifted inside me. Painting became a way to hold the space he left behind—a tender, honest place where loneliness could speak without shame. I think we all carry a hollow like that, shaped by someone we loved. When they leave, the emptiness stays, deep in the body, like a song that never quite ends. My mother’s absence deepened this silence, though it was my father’s departure that taught me how to listen to it.

Even as a child, I seemed to know this. At eleven, I won an award for a drawing of Red Riding Hood hiding behind a tree, a fox watching from the shadows. Looking back, it feels like I was sketching my own future before I’d lived it. I didn’t yet know that the person I’d trust could be a wolf in disguise. But somehow, my intuition was already speaking through colour and line.

Colours excite me. They feel almost edible—rich, alive, something I want to swallow whole. When I paint, it’s like tuning an instrument. Art is the pendulum that brings me back into rhythm, into balance. It lets the creative part of me breathe, not as a daughter, mother, wife, or friend—but simply as myself.

That discovery happened in a sunlit studio in Connecticut, thanks to the generosity of artist Jan Dilenschneider. She handed me a blank canvas and said, “Just go for it.” In that moment, a door opened. For the first time, I felt happiness that belonged only to me.

Now, when I paint, the world falls away. There’s only the next colour, the next stroke. My hands move as if guided by something larger—intuition, spirit, a quiet inner voice. If a colour doesn’t belong, my body refuses it, like a thermometer sensing the wrong temperature.

My work is how I quench a thirst my soul has carried since birth. It keeps me connected to nature, to ground, to a happiness that is mine alone.

I grew up quickly. Responsibilities arrived before I had time to ask what I truly wanted. Providing for myself wasn’t taught—it was something I felt in my bones, a quiet knowing that I would have to stand on my own. Painting became the place where I could set that weight down, even for a little while.

In each piece, I’m not trying to tell a story so much as invite a feeling. I want the viewer to sense the hush of a forest, the flicker of fear and wonder, the warmth of colour that feels like coming home. My paintings are maps of inner landscapes—places where grief and beauty share the same breath.

Sometimes people ask what my art means. I used to search for clever answers.
Now I say: it means I am still here. It means I am learning to be alone without being lonely. It means I am finding my way back to myself, one brushstroke at a time.
If my work offers anything to others, I hope it’s this: permission to feel deeply, to honor the empty spaces, and to trust that creativity can be a sanctuary.

You don’t need to understand every symbol or decode every shade. You only need to stand before the painting and let it meet you where you are. Art, for me, is not about perfection. It’s about presence. It’s the place where I can be fully, unapologetically alive—even in the midst of loss.