About 

In my paintings, I want my audience to consider the bizarreness of the American West as a metaphor for navigating America as an outsider. The narratives in my “ weird west”  landscapes are inspired by my own story but are changed enough for all viewers to relate to. The figures in my painting allow me to appropriate imagery and ephemera from American & International pop culture to create a surreal universe with which to tell a story. My autobiographical landscapes of the “weird west” obscure the personal in order to present the universal. 

 

The sci-fi found in the “weird west” combined with the ephemera from the cultures I am a part of  creates a confusion within my work. This confusion is a cultural confusion and pushes the absurdity of finding one’s way in an eternally strange place. I am interested in the process of enculturation and to what extent I participate in or reject this social phenomenon. In taking inspiration from a multitude of avenues, I piece together a body of work which entails the journey I am on as a child of immigrants navigating America. 

 

My upbringing and current life is bizarre, so naturally my paintings have to be bizarre. That bizarreness is a better reflection of my experience than a literal retelling of my story. I am an amalgamation of influences and experiences and reference that in my work. The tragic and comic are parts of socialization in another country so naturally I am interested in inept aliens bumping around their new land and scaring cattle. The American West is a second home to me, more like a chosen home. Just as a person choosing to come to a new country chooses their home, I have chosen mine. In choosing my own path, I open myself up to the intricacies and absurdities of a new society and even though enculturation is not my story just as my paintings are not my story, I tell this tale in earnest.