What is your favorite type of art to create?

I paint contemporary figurative work that blends the familiar with the unfamiliar, often merging past and present. Much of it places alien or hard-to-classify figures in ordinary settings, while other pieces lean into surreal imagery. I’m drawn to work that feels cinematic, quiet, and unresolved—paintings that invite pause. In today’s world, that pause matters. It asks us to question perception, assumption, and belonging.

Where do you find inspiration?

I find inspiration in memory, movement, ordinary life, and the quiet tension between familiarity and strangeness. An early awareness of what it means to not quite belong can shape the way a person sees the world, and art helps me transform that feeling into something visible while offering another perspective. Homes, neighborhoods, family scenes, alien imagery, and the feeling of being both connected to and outside of a place all shape my work.

What would you do with $25,000?

I would use $25,000 to invest in a more stable future for my family while also strengthening my ability to keep creating. I would put it toward practical support, tools, and opportunities that allow my work to grow in a lasting way. As that foundation becomes more secure, I would want my art to help children I know by encouraging their creativity, giving them more opportunity to make art themselves, and letting art help them the way it helped me.