I didn’t begin making art because I had a story to tell.

I began making art because I needed somewhere to put the things I couldn’t always explain.

Living with chronic illness has taught me that there are parts of a person that cannot be seen in a photograph, a medical chart, or a diagnosis. There is the exhaustion that doesn’t show. The pain that has no visible wound. The uncertainty of waking up and not knowing what your body will allow you to do that day. And there is the particular loneliness of having to prove that something is wrong before you are believed.

For a long time, I felt as though my body was speaking a language no one wanted to learn. Art became my way of translating it. My art is deeply personal, but I don't want it to belong only to me.

My work explores the spaces between what is visible and what is hidden-illness and identity, vulnerability and strength, dismissal and being believed. I use portraiture, mixed media, symbolism, text, color, and layers to create work that asks the viewer to look a little longer.

I cannot control what my body will do tomorrow.

But I can decide what I make from what I have lived through.

So I paint.

I layer.

I scrape away.

I rebuild.

And somewhere between the canvas, the story, and the person standing in front of it, I find a little more of myself.

This is my story.
This is my art.
And this is what I refuse to let disappear.