Artist Statement

There are moments of pure beauty I want to absorb completely — when the nostrils flare and every pore opens to take in a fragment of the surrounding atmosphere. These moments last only seconds, long for such a feeling. I collect them in memory, and they inevitably shape what I paint: the details, scenes, and landscapes that have left an imprint. In these moments I feel most nakedly myself.

I find in plants and fungi something I needed: the knowledge of how to grow through resistance, how to push through dense structure, how to carry hope. One thread of my practice is empathy across species — I try to inhabit the perspective of a plant or a mushroom, to feel what they might call desire or longing, and translate that through colour and composition. Both methods are improvisational, layered, slow — accumulations rather than statements.

I work in tempera (an ancient medium that resists and rewards patience), pastel, and hand-tufted textile. In many works, the first layer is calligraphy — a word written as mantra, beneath which impressions, meanings, and emotions accumulate.

Underneath all of it is a question: what does it mean to move forward — as a person, as a species? I am drawn to satyagraha and the naive but peaceful ideas of Russian Cosmism: that humanity might orient itself toward something genuinely expansive. My work is an argument for New Sincerity — the serious treatment of beauty, feeling, and ordinary human experience, in a world saturated with irony.