"My earliest memories involve drawing, watching my mother create life on paper, imagining fairytales and celestial maidens form out of nothing but pencil lines and curves. As I grew older, I disregarded the fairytales and stories I had grown up on, trading them for “practical skills and knowledge” as I tried to mold myself into the ideal daughter that my parents wanted me to be.

It was not until Covid hit—when the world slowed down—that I allowed myself to pick up a paintbrush again, to become whole again.

My inspiration has been and still is women—the complex, multi-faceted women found in both mythology and folklore, alongside the women I’ve encountered and interacted with in real life. In this series, I have explored the concept of duality in women through mythology with five figures—Selene, Nuwa, Persephone, Ophelia, and Lakshmi. Women who both breathe life into the Earth and bring about death, women who have intrigued and threatened societies throughout the centuries that their stories have existed.

To that end, I work primarily in watercolor—a medium that is decidedly capricious with a mind of its own. Drawing inspiration from a variety of sources, ranging from Klimt and Mucha to Tran Nguyen, I sought to depict these female figures in mythology in their full glory, juxtaposing sharply precise linework alongside blooms and washes of watercolor paint while incorporating gold ink and foil to bring their full strength and power to life."