Artist Statement

It doesn't ask me to flatten things into something comfortable or recognizable. It lets the color be loud. It lets the texture speak. It lets the viewer bring their own experience into the room and find something real waiting there.

I grew up going to museums. I took art seriously long before I made it seriously. That relationship — between a lifelong absorber of art and the moment you finally step to the other side of it — is in every painting I make.

I grew up in New York City, via the Caribbean and South America. I live now in the Midwest, where I work as a university professor and researcher. I am starting to incorporate visual arts and visual methodologies in my research. I have my own studio, and am committed to making this practice a reality. There is tension in the geographies of my past and present — between the big city that shaped me, the island that gave me foundation and history, and now, the quiet Midwest that finally gave me room to expand as an artist.

My work comes from cultural memory and everyday feeling, from the transnational experience of belonging everywhere and nowhere fully, from boredom and beauty and the specific desire to be free, free from perfection, from expectation, from the nondescript. I work with acrylic and sometimes oil. I use color the way I've always understood it: boldly, intuitively, and in full conversation with what the painting is asking for.

I am currently earning my MFA in Visual Arts from Clark University.