This is where I unify conceptual systems that execute a single narrative theme across multiple disciplines simultaneously. Combining structural painting, character design layouts, digital composites, and copywriting, I construct deep visual experiences that explore complex personal and cultural ideas.
17 works
The year a comic book stopped being a story and became a countdown.
It began as a single assignment and refused to end there. Seventeen works now circle the same four people, moving between gouache portraits of the two men who invented them, a presentation drawing of a tower that does not exist, oil on canvas, motion, and two books written to hold the rest together. Almost every one of them is lettered by hand, because a title drawn rather than typed still carries the hand that wanted it. What holds the project together is not the characters. It is the feeling of standing at a window before the engines light.
Three works that answer a country in the language it asked in.
A flag can become a face if you look at it long enough. Three works make up this project, and each one arrives at heritage from a different distance. An oil triptych sets a young man in a red áo dài between the Lạc bird and a Lý-Trần dragon, both turning back toward the heart he holds. A single sketchbook page puts an eye inside the gold star and lets the flag look back at you. Three breakfasts are drawn one to a page with their names lettered underneath in Vietnamese. Small in number, and not small in what they carry. A dish written in its own language is a dish nobody has to translate for you.
Two portraits, one flower each, painted a month apart.
These two were made to hang together and they only really work that way. My sister wears a crown of daisies, roses, tulips and one sunflower, painted at twelve by sixteen inches over six visible stages, the ground sliding from yellow into pink behind her. A month later I painted myself against a field split between red and deep navy, a single sunflower opening behind my ear and two monarchs lifting away from it. She got many flowers. I gave myself one and let it do the work. In both paintings the flower is the only light source in the room, which is the closest I have come to saying what I think nature is for.