I make art that explores the weird, colorful, and messy nature of the world around me. My painting and my writing depict people and the worlds we build together as flawed, challenging, and worthy of deep study. I use dramatic colors and surreal compositions as tools of optimism which assert that the systems around me can be transformed in radical ways. My figurative paintings involve portraits of queer and outsider communities, both my own and those I interpret in reference materials. I am an experimental artist who works with oils, acrylic, collage, ink, canvas, paper, and wood panels. My work is inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s use of the ‘distancing effect’; I play with form as an attempt to speak to the conditions of contemporary life by making what is familiar seem strange, and vice versa.