I'm a self-taught abstract artist based in San Diego, California. I use acrylic paint and let the piece develop organically- it often undergoes many versions before it feels finished. This process parallels healing or personal growth- undergoing many transitions to incorporate painful, often traumatic, experiences into our lives to move past and move on- if we can.

Many of my best paintings express a profound pain and darkness, even torture- that intense deep, stomach-twisting, dizzying, heart-wrenching pain that many of us experience in silence. We are silent because we are afraid to be judged as crazy. We are silent because we feel fragmented and damaged. We are silent because we are ashamed. We are silent because we think we are the only ones experiencing this and no one will understand- we don't even understand. The darkness is real; the pain and the loneliness are profound. Painting has become an outlet of often confusing emotions related to my trauma and 18 years of secondary trauma from working as a social worker with victims of crime at Rady Children's Hospital Chadwick Center, Catholic Charities' adoption program, CPS, and the FBI. 

I am so grateful for the cathartic experience painting is in my life- a quiet expression of pain, healing, hope, and the spiritual world I seek to make sense of.