It all goes back to art school. To be honest, at the time I hated painting. I remember saying to myself “I’m never going to be a painter.” I felt like my professors wanted me to paint like someone else, both in meaning and in style. It felt forced. 

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After graduating from UW-Madison in 2016, I moved into my first “adult” apartment. There was a large blank wall above the TV and I wanted to fill it with something funky and colorful, something that made me smile when I looked at it. So I did just that. I made a painting that made me feel happy, and the response I received was very encouraging! People really liked it. Unlike in art school, this time I had painted something that I wanted to paint. I painted it just for me, just for fun. No Earth shattering meaning or societal commentary, just pretty colors and dots. It felt much more like me. Light. Happy.

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From that moment on I began the journey of developing my own “visual language” to describe what I find engaging and makes me happy in this world. I challenge myself now to look at a photograph or scene in front of me and extract from it the most playful parts - colors, textures, shapes. I call these my “whimsy hues”.

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With every completed painting I am one composition closer to becoming fluent in my language of whimsy hues. I hope that as I continue to develop my colorful and funky language, others find joy in how it sounds on canvas. It’s not always important to know how or why we like something. We can just feel that it brings us joy.