I walked into a wave and it spit me out on the other side

2024,18 x 24”, soft pastels and acrylic on paper.

I find it extremely challenging to stick to one medium when painting; a single medium feels so restrictive, like someone randomly plucked out the keys on my keyboard and then told me to write a heartfelt poem. I love chalk pastels because of the way they blend; they almost feel like mixing gas station slushie flavors. I love acrylics for their plasticky precision. I love gouache because of its tactile matt finish.I love pencil crayons because of their texture. I could go on and on forever, but most of all, I love observing how each of these mediums interacts with the others. I itch to see the final outfit they create when layered together.

In this piece, I layered acrylics over chalk pastels. The trick to doing this is sandwiching the layers of chalk between varnish before introducing the acrylic. The feeling of painting on fixated chalk with a synthetic medium is so delicious; if you use a longer brush, the paint just sails across.

Moving closer to the ocean has significantly influenced the subject matter of my work. While my pieces have always been described as fluid and botanical, now, instead of being at the shore, they are submerged in the ocean. I spent a lot of time in bodies of water while growing up. For years, I had dreams of being wedged into a swimming pool. I think my fascination with water revolves more around its buoyancy or flotation, its lightness, rather than its movement. Vivid pool dreams are quite common in those who have been under anesthesia, representing the in-between — neither here nor there, neither a child nor an adult. It's a kind of nothingness. The idea of nothingness is often approached with negativity, but my intention is not to portray it that way. I believe many of our answers are found in nothingness — staring at the ceiling, during long car rides where all you can do is sit, in hot showers, while lying in hospital beds, in bathtubs. Not when you think about something a lot, but when you finally don’t think about it at all.