Meet the Artist is our new series where we invite you to get to know the creative minds behind the work. Each edition pairs an in-depth editorial Q&A - a chance to explore the artist's background, process, and inspiration - with a Happy Hour where you can see a featured collection of their work and connect with the artist. Because the best way to experience art is alongside the person who made it.
What’s your favorite aspect of being a visual artist?
Freedom, and the constant search for what’s next. No two days are really the same. I’m always researching ideas, looking for new concepts, experimenting with techniques, thinking about new shows or galleries, or finding a different way to express something visually. I love that there is no real finish line. You keep evolving as an artist and as a person, and your work evolves with you. I think I’m addicted to that sense of movement and possibility.
What time of day are you most creative?
Somewhere between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. Those are definitely my golden hours. My brain seems to wake up at night — ideas become clearer, decisions come faster, and I can work for hours without really noticing the time.
Have you ever painted a mural? How was it different from painting on canvas?
Yes, quite a few, including some very large ones — around 25 × 75’ and even 30 × 190’. For me, the biggest difference is that when I make a painting, I’m usually telling my own story — my ideas, observations, memories, whatever I’m exploring at that moment. With a mural, you’re often given someone else’s idea or message, and your job is to translate those words into your own visual language.
Technically, the biggest challenge is scale: figuring out how to take a small sketch and transfer it accurately onto an enormous wall. But there is also something very different emotionally about murals. There’s a sense of grandeur to them. You’re making something out in public, for hundreds or thousands of people to live with and walk past every day.
What adjective best describes your aesthetic?
Bold. I’m drawn to strong color, graphic shapes, dramatic light and shadow, and compositions that feel very intentional. Even when the subject is nostalgic, I want the painting itself to feel fresh and contemporary. I like work that catches your attention from across the room but still gives you something to discover when you get closer.
Do you have any current obsessions?
Resin. Completely obsessed with it at the moment — and also slightly annoyed by it because it is much trickier than it looks. I’ve been experimenting with incorporating resin into some smaller works because I love that incredibly glossy, almost lacquered surface.
There’s something about that finish that works beautifully with the imagery I’m exploring right now. It can make a piece feel like an old enamel sign, a vintage souvenir, or some polished piece of Americana, while the composition and color still feel very contemporary. I like that tension between nostalgic and modern.
Are you a perfectionist? How do you deal with mistakes?
Yes — but “perfect” to me means my version of perfect. I usually have a very clear sense of where I want a painting to end up. That becomes the finish line.
So mistakes are frustrating, but I think of them more as obstacles on the way there. You walk around them, jump over them, repaint them, sand them down — whatever it takes. They don’t change where I’m going. I’ve learned that almost anything in art can be fixed if you’re willing to keep working at it and figure out how. Once you really believe that, mistakes become small frustrations instead of disasters.
Does being a mom impact your art?
Very much. My kids have taught me persistence, discipline and, probably most importantly, belief in what consistent effort can do.
When my older son Adrian was about six, he fell completely in love with soccer. He would come home from school and practice tricks and moves he had seen on YouTube for hours. At first, honestly, some of them looked pretty ridiculous. Then a few weeks later, he could actually do them.
Of course I already knew that practice makes you better — everybody knows that — but watching a little kid prove it to himself over and over somehow made it very real to me. It changed the way I approached my own work. I became much more willing to learn techniques I didn’t know, experiment with things I couldn't yet do, and put in the hours instead of deciding something was outside my ability.
One of the biggest things I learned from that is that your imagination expands with your skills. Once I learned how to do more, I also started imagining more.
Is there a continuous theme or story behind your art?
Yes, although it keeps changing as I change. I’m very interested in the space between reality and imagination — the way we remember places, romanticize them, or imagine a life slightly bigger than the one directly in front of us.
Lately I’ve been especially drawn to Americana: roadside architecture, western landscapes, old cars, motels, pools, signs and ordinary objects that somehow carry a lot of nostalgia. I’m not really interested in recreating the past, though. I like taking those familiar things and reshaping them through bold color, strange crops, reflections and exaggerated light until they become their own little world.
A lot of your works have a Western American theme; did you dream of moving out West as a kid?
Not at all. That fascination came much later, after I moved to Austin and discovered the culture of the American road trip. Before that, if somewhere was 12 or 20 hours away, I would just fly. Then I moved to Texas and suddenly driving to Colorado, New Mexico or Arizona was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Those trips completely changed the way I saw the American West. I fell in love with the vastness of the landscape, the endless highways, Route 66, old motels and diners, tiny desert towns, abandoned places and Colorado ghost towns. There’s something about driving through it that you don’t experience when you fly over it. You watch the landscape and architecture slowly change, and you start noticing all these strange, beautiful things along the way.
That’s really where the Western and Americana imagery in my work came from — not from growing up dreaming about the West, but from discovering it as an adult and being completely fascinated by it.
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