Rooted in quiet observation and driven by a lifelong affinity with animals, my work explores the complex and often contradictory ways we relate to the natural world—particularly through systems of display, taxonomy, and preservation. Trained as a painter and shaped by years of living between cultures—across the US and Europe—I’ve become increasingly focused on the entanglement of empathy, extinction, and aesthetics within Natural History collections
The imagery I work with emerges from deep, sustained engagement: months of drawing at museums, conversations with curators, and ongoing research into animal studies, natural history, and collecting practices. Visits to collections around the world—from Florence and Oxford to Vienna and Washington D.C.—have informed not only the content of my work, but its ethics.
The themes I keep returning to—empathy, extinction, memory, containment—show up in my work both visually and conceptually. Sometimes, in a series of paintings, animals slowly vanish from one painting to the next or are absorbed into the dark background. Other times, they appear densely packed together, echoing the overwhelming feeling of being faced with mass loss. I use detail, repetition, and subtle shifts in light and space to invite viewers to stay with the image a little longer.
In a time when biodiversity loss is often reduced to numbers and headlines, I see painting as a space of resistance—a place where we can reimagine our relationships with other species, even if only momentarily. Through careful looking, I invite viewers to confront the silences, the absences, and the quiet agency that lingers in these preserved bodies. I hope the animals in my work are not only seen, but seen as looking back.
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