My work begins where personal memory, cultural inheritance, and mythology meet. As a Puerto Rican and Filipina artist, I paint women and girls - not as muses or martyrs, but as witnesses, warriors, and storytellers. Many of my paintings are inspired by old family photographs and ancestral stories, while others reimagine biblical women through a feminist lens. Figures whose existences were silenced, erased, or minimized are revisited with empathy and a desire to illuminate the complexity of their lives.
I was raised in a spiritually strict environment where obedience, modesty, and fear of the outside world shaped every part of life. Questioning was discouraged. That upbringing gave me a deep sensitivity to themes of morality, judgment, and devotion - but also a longing to find meaning beyond the values I was taught. As a therapist, I believe that understanding the past is essential to understanding the present. That’s why my work also reflects on past and present collective experiences of girlhood and womanhood.
My work reclaims the sacred language I was taught to obey without question and reshapes it through care, curiosity, and embodied truth.
Color is central to my language. I use saturated reds, greens, blues, and ochres to evoke both a fever dream and sense of ceremony. My process is layered and intuitive: sometimes I begin with a sketch, but often I begin from a place of feeling - using color to communicate what words cannot.
Much of my work is about loss - of home, of safety, of history - but also about the refusal to let go of love, even when told to. It’s about women who look back, who grieve openly, who carry their people with them. It’s about survival that does not erase tenderness.
These paintings are not about perfection. They are about being seen - in all our color, complexity, and care.