All Flourishing

48" x 72" Oil on Handmade Panel 2025

This painting sprouted from an inquiry of how the wisdom of the body and colorful visual expression could play together through improvisation. A collaborator spoke movement prompts from Laban's improvisational dance score language that I translated into painting strokes, letting my body directly convey the paint through my hands, as inspired by the prompt, with as little mental interpretation as possible.

Subsequent layers built upon those initial moments and, the whole work is guided by the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, which are hidden in an early layer, and are also the title - "All flourishing is mutual.”

On A Quiet Day

24" x 48" Oil on Handmade Panel 2026

With this piece I wanted to share a special moment from a misty walk with friends in Portland's Forest Park. My intention was to emphasize the feeling of mystery before us, humans lovingly integrated into a landscape, as we move together towards the unknown, and the ability of highly-saturated colors to spark imaginative potential.

Still Possible

120" x 48" Oil on Handmade Panel 2026

This painting began as a vision that arrived during the fires that swept through LA in early 2025, when I lived near evacuation zones and could see distant flames from my window. In the liminal space of constant alertness and deep exhaustion an image came of a portal, a vision of the choice point humans are facing: continue towards a future of increasingly gray skies, binary thinking and burned-out landscapes, or build and reach towards a future where we have reconciled our relationship with fire and water, and restored abundance.

Along with a few other pieces, the title is drawn from a quote by Arundhati Roy “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

I Can Hear Her Breathing

72" x 48" Oil on Handmade Panel 2026

This is my most direct example thus far of uniting figurative and abstract work in a single piece, to continue bridging our waking rational perception with our imaginative world-creating potential.

At nearly life size, this piece also explores my curiosity of how body-scale work affects viewers.

And as the Black female body is rarely shown in triumphant poses in classical art, it feels like an important and revolutionary contribution to represent my and other Black bodies in celebratory poses.

Meander

24" x 48" Oil on Handmade Panel 2025

Afterword

24" x 36" Oil on Panel 2024

This piece is an exploration of radical imagination, positing a future on the other side of the nationalism and colonization that make us forget our interdependence.

Hidden amongst the mushrooms in various states of decay are flags of some of the most egregious colonizing countries.

Along with Still Possible, if we can dream and walk our way to a world where harmful notions of political separation have been composted like other toxins, and we thrive in relationship with flowing waters and vibrant wildlife.

Wonder

24" x 36" Oil on Handmade Panel 2026

Make Me Soil

11" x 14" Oil on Panel 2024

Born of a contemplation of mortality, I started this while still freshly processing my Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis, as a way of coming to terms with my potentially shortened life and to connect with the wisdom of nature, where death is simply part of the cycle.