I create work that explores memory, emotion, symbolism, and the relationship between people and the natural world. Much of my inspiration comes from the shoreline and the emotional weight it has carried throughout my life. I was born and raised in Florida, where weekends at the beach became a defining part of my childhood. Long before I understood its influence on my art, the ocean shaped the way I experienced the world around me. The changing tides, storm-filled skies, salt air, shells, sea grass, and endless horizons became deeply connected to feelings of comfort, freedom, mystery, longing, and reflection.

Growing up surrounded by coastal landscapes taught me to associate nature with emotion. The ocean represented many things at once- escape and belonging, calm and unpredictability, solitude and connection. Those experiences continue to shape the visual language throughout my work. In many of my paintings and illustrations, shorelines become symbolic spaces rather than literal locations. I see them as thresholds: places where opposing forces meet - land and water, safety and uncertainty, memory and transformation, the familiar and the unknown.

Water itself has become a recurring metaphor in my work. Like emotion, it is constantly shifting, impossible to fully control, yet capable of healing and renewal. I am drawn to moments that feel emotionally charged but quiet: dusk before darkness, stillness before a storm, or the suspended feeling between leaving and returning. Through dreamlike coastal environments, distant horizons, moonlit water, solitary figures, lanterns, winding paths, and atmospheric light, I try to create spaces that feel suspended between memory and imagination.

After living in Kentucky, Indiana, Washington, and now Michigan, my relationship to the shoreline has evolved over time. Being away from Florida made me realize how deeply the coast represented home, identity, and emotional grounding for me. As a result, coastal imagery continues to appear throughout my work as a way of reconnecting with memory, nostalgia, and personal history. Even when the environments I paint are imagined or symbolic, they are rooted in real emotional experiences and places that continue to stay with me.

Natural symbolism plays an important role throughout my work. Elements such as sea turtles, banyan trees, storms, moonlight, and weathered shorelines appear repeatedly as symbols of resilience, vulnerability, transition, healing, and renewal. Rather than fully defining a narrative, I want my work to remain emotionally open-ended, allowing viewers to bring their own memories, interpretations, and experiences into the space of the painting.

Through layered textures, muted light, and atmospheric color palettes, I aim to create emotional landscapes as much as physical ones. Ultimately, my work is an exploration of memory, longing, and the quiet spaces between connection and solitude. Through painting and illustration, I hope to create reflective, immersive environments where viewers can reconnect with parts of themselves that exist somewhere between land and sea.