ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Who are we? Who were we? Why create abstract art when the world is on fire?

Despite our technological sophistication, we remain much like our earliest ancestors—moved by the same emotions, needs, and longings. This continuity inspires me. My work draws from prehistoric cave art, a 15th-century Nahuatl poem on mortality, and 20th-century American abstract expressionism. With a background in literature and the humanities, I’m also shaped by poetry and music - their rhythms, silences, and emotional resonance.

Through layered surfaces, color, and mark-making, I explore memory, impermanence, and the fragility of life. The painted surface becomes both a record of time and a metaphor for the transience of existence. I seek translucency, atmosphere, and luminosity—qualities that evoke emotion and a sense of presence. My art is a meditation on time, change, and the persistence of being.

In the face of today’s crises—pandemic, conflict, climate change, environmental loss—I often question the value of abstraction. It can seem distant or frivolous amid such urgency. Yet it is precisely in these moments that abstract art asserts its power. It affirms life, resilience, and our shared humanity. Alongside suffering and anger, there is still beauty, joy, and the pulse of being. Color stirs emotion; line carries movement; a mark says I am, we are—echoing the timeless gestures of cave painters.

For me, making abstract art is an act of celebration. It connects us to ourselves and to those who came before. In its silence and ambiguity, it holds space for reflection and feeling. It reminds us that to create is, always, to affirm life.