Connect What is your favorite type of art to create?

Surrealism. I’m fascinated by the my dreams, intuition, and the subconscious. I do not paint because I am an artist. I paint because my soul asks me to listen. The elongated legs, the surreal form, whisper of distant echoes of Dalí’s elephants, but this one stands in my own landscape: a bridge between memory, pain, and becoming. This is not just a painting. It is proof that even after we break, something within us still knows how to stand. The red is not just color, it is strength, it is life.

Where do you find inspiration?

Years ago, something in me broke, slowly, quietly, through betrayal, through the confusion that blurred the edges of who I was. There are wounds that words cannot express. Mine found their voice in color. I began to paint, not as an artist, but as someone searching for a way back to myself. Each stroke became a breath, each shape a small act of repair. This elephant emerged from that journey. It carries the weight and the wisdom of survival.

What would you do with $25,000?

I am a scientist studying substance use disorders and alcohol-associated liver disease, focusing on the gut–vagus–brain and gut–liver axes. I am establishing my own lab to study how intestinal homeostasis influences brain function and liver disease. Beyond science, art is central to me as self-expression and human connection. Once I have stable housing, I would also use part of this to support art.