Seduced by Illusion: Between Reality and Psychological Tension

I'm interested in the moment when viewers stop seeing paint and begin emotionally believing in the illusion. Once that trust is established, I can disrupt it through impossible light, fractured space, or psychological tension. If someone forgets they're looking at a painting before questioning what they're seeing, I know the work is functioning.

3. Your work seems to psychoanalyze the idea of femininity rather than simply represent it. What first inspired you to explore the psychological complexities of the feminine?

I became interested in how femininity is constructed through social expectations, history, and desire rather than existing as something fixed. Painting allows me to examine those layers without offering simple conclusions, revealing both the power and vulnerability that can exist simultaneously.

4. Concepts such as cognitive dissonance and dissociation play an important role in your work. How do you translate these psychological states into visual language?

I create visual contradictions reversing light, shifting perspective, or placing the body in impossible spaces. These subtle disruptions encourage viewers to experience uncertainty rather than simply observe it, mirroring the psychological states I'm exploring.

5. Your paintings reference the tradition of Old Master portraiture while simultaneously subverting its conventions. Where does your dialogue with that tradition begin, and where does it depart from it?

I borrow the technical language of the Old Masters the careful modeling, illusionism, and sense of presence but I reject their certainty. Instead of reinforcing traditional narratives of beauty or identity, I use those same tools to question perception, power, and representation.

6. Your work engages with ideas surrounding the male gaze. Do you believe the male gaze in contemporary painting has genuinely evolved, or has it simply taken on new forms?

I think it has become more subtle rather than disappearing. Contemporary painting often acknowledges the gaze, but it can still reproduce the same structures of looking. My work attempts to interrupt that relationship by making the viewer aware of their own act of looking.

7. Your paintings also engage with intersectional queer feminism and questions of socio-sexual empowerment. Do you believe art has the power to influence these conversations and create social change?

Art rarely changes society overnight, but it can change perception, and perception shapes culture. I think painting creates space for empathy and self-reflection, allowing viewers to reconsider assumptions about identity, power, and the body.

8. You intentionally reverse the logic of light and shift the center of composition. Why is it important for you to disrupt the viewer's habitual way of looking at a painting?

Our brains are conditioned to trust certain visual rules. By quietly breaking those rules, I encourage viewers to slow down and become aware of how they're constructing meaning. That moment of uncertainty opens the door to deeper psychological engagement.

9. The figures in your paintings often appear both powerful and vulnerable at the same time. How do you create that delicate emotional balance?

I don't see strength and vulnerability as opposites. The figures hold themselves with confidence while remaining emotionally exposed, allowing both qualities to coexist. That tension feels much closer to lived human experience.

10. Your paintings seem to exist outside of a specific time, feeling neither entirely historical nor entirely contemporary. Why is this sense of timelessness important to your work?

I want the work to exist outside of a fixed historical moment so the psychological questions remain relevant. Blending historical references with contemporary ideas allows the paintings to move beyond chronology and speak to recurring human experiences.

11. When someone stands in front of your paintings, do you hope they respond emotionally first, or intellectually?

Emotion comes first. If the painting creates an emotional connection, curiosity naturally follows, and that's where intellectual engagement begins. Ideally, the two continue unfolding together.

12. How did your education at UCLA and LCAD shape your artistic practice? Do you still see the influence of your academic training in your work today?

LCAD gave me a rigorous technical foundation in representational painting, while UCLA encouraged me to question why those traditions exist and how they communicate meaning. My practice today is very much a conversation between those two experiences.

13. Having presented numerous solo exhibitions throughout your career, is there one exhibition that proved especially transformative for you as an artist, and why?

Each exhibition has marked a different stage of my development, but the most transformative ones were those where I stopped focusing on individual paintings and began thinking about the exhibition as a complete psychological experience. That's when my work became more cohesive and intentional.

14. As artificial intelligence, digital media, and an increasingly fast-paced visual culture reshape the art world, how do you see the future of slow, technically demanding oil painting?

I think slow painting has become even more relevant. In a culture driven by speed and endless images, handcrafted oil paintings offer something increasingly rare: sustained attention, material presence, and a direct record of human labor and perception.

15. If viewers could leave your exhibition with just one feeling or one question, what would you hope it would be?

I hope they leave questioning how much of what they see in paintings and in everyday life is shaped by perception rather than certainty. If the work encourages someone to look more carefully at both images and themselves, then it has done its job.