About Me

How can I blend the lines of fantasy and reality? How does your childhood affect your view of yourself and the world around you? How does the symbolism of light and/or stars represent childhood and imagination? To answer these questions I experimented with abstract backgrounds and mixed media as well as putting different forms of light in my paintings. I added stars in unconventional places for a more playful look, night time twinkle stars to show a peaceful, dreamlike world, and bursts of gold or amplified light to emphasize the subjects as the star. While some pieces don’t specifically include the light of stars, each painting includes me and/or a family member in a scene from childhood but set in a slightly altered background. These paintings provide a less obvious portrayal of light and more deeply focus on the light of childhood itself. When reflecting back on my childhood as a whole, I view it as a glimmer of light in the distance, similarly to how we see stars in the sky here on earth. By not only focusing on using stars to symbolize the light of childhood, but also detailing how children develop their inner light is an intentional choice to further explore how imagination affects your childhood and how one sees the world. This shows how a person can ignore the distractions and negative influences in the world and turn within to follow their “inner light” to find the right path.