What is your favorite type of art to create?

Painting on refurbished wood and reclaimed surfaces. There is something sacred about choosing a material the world has already lived with — wood with a history, shapes with a past life — breathing new color into them. Each surface arrives with its own story, its own grain and scar and texture, and I respond to it. I work with what is already there, not against it. The imperfections become part of the composition. I make something that holds both memory and renewal at once, a union of light.

Where do you find inspiration?

In the layers beneath the surface of everyday life — the way light moves through a window, the geometry hidden in trees, the emotion in a face that goes unspoken. I am drawn to the beauty that exists quietly all around us, waiting to be named and sometimes held. Nature, memory, human resilience, the overlooked and the discarded — these are my sources. I believe the world is already extraordinary. My work is sense-making through color finding the intimacy already woven into the world with sight.

What would you do with $25,000?

I would build a dedicated studio space and stock it with the materials to work freely and without limit — reclaimed wood, specialty surfaces, premium paints. I would also launch a community workshop series where I teach others, especially those navigating healing, to find their own creative agency. Art gave me a mirror to see myself more wholly. With this investment I could expand that mirror outward, and help others discover that making something beautiful is itself an act of survival and joy.​