I use still-life and landscape painting to both connect with and critique the world around me. My practice centers on such dualities: connection.critique, personal/political, intimate/global.

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In the studio, I start with slow looking. In a world where we spend just 8 seconds on average looking at images, I believe painting can be resistance—a slow, loving act of attention. While our culture treats attention like currency, I follow philosopher Simone Weil's definition: "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."

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I use classical painting techniques to expose how old power structures still shape us. Food in art has carried symbolic weight for centuries—wealth, status, abundance. I see it echoed in today's food influencer posts. I work with this loaded history, using painting to visualize persistent colonial, capitalist, and consumer culture narratives.

Classical painting helps me visualize what we're not supposed to see: the distance between us and exploited land, the hidden labor behind our comfort. I paint lavish meals against backdrops of wildfires, or Mars landscapes using iron pigments I've harvested myself. In smaller works, I document specific moments through sky paintings—constellations from particular nights, clouds that will never form exactly that way again.

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Yet despite food's complicated history, sharing meals remains deeply human. Alongside my critiques, I carry gentler memories: my mother cooking with garden vegetables, friends sharing strawberries from their family farm, roadside corn stands operating on trust.

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Through careful attention, I seek connection—with my immediate community, global neighbors, and the land beneath my feet.