My journey as an artist began with lessons in drawing and painting. My earliest teachers — Heather Barros, Ida Pearle, and Henry Finkelstein — had me fill sketchbooks and work with traditional materials. I spent years working with oil paints before I picked up in high school the much easier medium of acrylic! Their classes were the most pivotal to my artistic practice — even more so than any one taken in college — because they allowed me to explore the beauty and playfulness and search that is art making. To spend time away from screens, I still enjoy working physically. Often, I’ll incorporate physical practices into large projects to give it a more personal touch. But as shown in the pieces here, I also try to spend time painting and drawing for the sake of painting and drawing alone — sometimes for commissions, but more often as an escape into that playground of discovery and possibility.