Creativity and art was the freedom to create possibilities for a new future for myself. Art was an important part of my well being, self expression and shaping my environment to support my growth. I had bold and often differing sensibilities than my peers and family growing up. For many years I held back on following my vision and often felt constricted by modernist aesthetics and social norms. When my health collapsed in university I decide to stop fighting with myself and work on creating the person I had always wanted to be. Following more campy aesthetics, fluidity in fashion and expression to eventually share wonder with the world. A simple curiosity to learn about oneself became one of the most empowering adventures I’ve been on. I’ve continued to create art in order to share the possibility of making your life your best story.

My practice often blends personal experiences, identity and nature with playfulness and wonder. Often experimenting to blend various mediums, genres and productions I have loved creating a YUniverse to explore. The environment is more than a presence of nature in my art, it is an exploration of how we build our world. This is where my love of world building and installation work connect; to ask what environment creates your vision of the world. Your environment is the space your create from your thoughts, your home space, to the painting portals on your walls. I see the human connection to our environment as sacred and art as portals to the visions of who we get to become.

Art is an intuitive, and energetic ceremony of often playful or intimate creation. When I draw in nature I have a collection of songs to play to the plants. I usually have a cup of tea or water, and play music or a show for many hours when I work on a piece. Over time I learned that without setting the mood or a reminder what feels like an hour will end up being five hours. Another important part of my rituals is texture. Sometimes texture is about combining a physical drawing into a digital artwork, while other times it’s adding a sense of touch. One of the reasons I still love finger painting is the unmistakable sense of connection from touch sculpting the movement of paint. Often times I wear an apron making art knowing I’ll still find a way to get paint everywhere. I’ll create from spending time in nature, to playing with a sketch or even jump into an artwork from an image that popped in my head.

A lot of inspiration comes from personal experiences. For example I make spending time in nature a priority, I’ll sometimes park my car to run and grab a picture of a rainbow. Another big inspiration has been fantasy, sci-fi and video games from spending time with my family. My style often connects to visuals from manga and anime especially from series exploring identity and gender expression. There is often playful camp and wonder that plays into my art direction, treating an art commission like a quest. One of my favourite family traditions was when my dad would bring home a new Ghibli film to watch. The little moments felt magical and influenced my love of fantasy world building and magic. The connection to nature was also a huge part of my spiritual practice in being a witch and paganism.

Some of my biggest themes are combining personal identity to the natural world, whimsy and wonder, phantasmagorical and maximalism, magic and colourful camp.