Art

Who are you when you strip away the facade?

In my minimalist, medium- to large-scale paintings and fiber art, I document the lifelong journey to reveal our true selves. I give form to the state of activated peace we reach when we know and fully accept ourselves, replacing external sources of power with a much more potent internal one.

My quest to discover who I truly am brought me from a successful technology career in Silicon Valley back to art, a practice I abandoned for 20 years. I realized that societies and institutions fit us into molds, separating us from ourselves, our desires, and our curiosity so completely that we forget who we are and what we want. To remember, we have to remove the external clutter of behaviors, beliefs, and identities we adopted to uncover the ones that are intrinsic to us.

My practice evokes childhood memories of drawing and using rug hooking kits while my mother and grandmother hand-knit beautiful garments. I wish to recapture the childlike joy in creativity that stems from desire and curiosity, not pressure or expectations about the outcome or the future. I hook rugs by hand as a reminder that after paring ourselves down to our essence, the process of rebuilding ourselves from our authentic core is organic, unpredictable, and unique to each of us.

Pursuing this path is more challenging than staying in the comfort zone of conformity. But now that the systems that shape us are replacing anything that fits into a mold with AI, we must tap into our individuality and curiosity to thrive. It is also key to enacting change as a creative process, where we don’t just resist what already exists, but build what we want to see in the world.