"What Makes You, You" International Juried Online Art Compet

 My hair is always wild, my mind even wilder. This self-portrait is a celebration of the chaos inside my head—the opinions, the noise, the uninvited commentary from the world. Each face in the tangle is a version of me, or a voice I’ve had to outgrow. It’s a reminder that identity is never tidy, and that sometimes, the mess is the masterpiece.

Acrylic and marker

New York, NY, USA

The ability to transmute the negative into the positive is part of our deepest evolution, guided by the invisible thread that pulls us back to our origin. As we heal our past, we reshape our future.

 Mixed Media on Canvas. Acrylic, Charcoal, Glitter.

Ocala, FL, USA

 “Innocence Lost” is a portrait of a little girl after sexual assault—her sadness is palpable, but so is her calm resolve. I painted this from the place where trauma and resilience collide, where the world tries to take your voice and you find a new one anyway. The colors and posture speak to the quiet strength that survivors carry, and the way we learn to hold our own brokenness with dignity. 

Acrylic and marker

New York, USA

 This self portrait reflects the way I move through the world with a quiet intensity that often sets me apart. I follow my own rhythm and create from a place that feels instinctive and deeply personal. I photograph subjects that I understand the concept but often leaves the viewer with unsettling feelings and more questions than answers. The image holds a sense of stillness and uncertainty because that is how I experience my surroundings, and it mirrors the way others often struggle to understand the darker and more contemplative parts of me. I've been shaped by being silenced by my family, friends, and peers. This is how I feel the world observes me and that plays a massive role in my photography 

Photography

Ocala, FL. USA

This piece is my rawest confession—painted in the thick of a legal battle, haunted by the question of how I’d be seen by a judge, by the world, by myself. The swirling faces and fractured forms are the many selves I carry.  It’s a portrait of living with a diagnosis, but also of refusing to be reduced to it. 

Acrylic

New York, USA

This piece reflects the truth I rarely say out loud, becoming myself has meant learning what to do with pain that never asked my permission. Through collage, distortion, and fragmentation, I’m trying to make sense of the versions of me that survive, hide, and fight. This is what it looks like inside my chest.
 

Acrylic and mixed media materials. 

  Ocala, Florida, USA

  This piece is about the lies we swallow about ourselves—how trauma can make you believe you’re poison, that everything you touch is tainted. The girl in “Venomous” is engulfed in snakes and flies, but some of those flies are turning into butterflies. It’s about transformation, about the slow, stubborn hope that even the most toxic stories can be rewritten. I painted it as a protest against shame, and as a prayer for anyone who’s ever felt unlovable.

Acrylic paint and pen

New York, USA

 This is one of my more deeper and darker concepts. Originally set against a fallen down building and photographed as a part of a short horror creative writing story. It reflects who I am. She still screams.. screams in silence, she screams when no one else can hear her pain, when no one notices her, when she's feels she lost everything, when she feels totally alone in the world. Growing up and still today, I have the ability to see the world and other things in a way no one can. Sensing there is the unknown. My photography often reflects those visions that only myself can see, sharing it with the world so they can see it too! Both of these Photos (taken by me, one of me and one of my visions) reflect what shaped me as an artist not only visual medium but also written medium. 

Photography

Ocala, FL. USA

 The assemblage art contains photography mounted on canvas as well as ‘sketches’ with various materials (such as sea glass, crushed glass, satin fabric) and written text in ink. I take my camera with me almost everywhere I go as my photography captures everyday sensory experiences. Much like a journal, the photographs identify and crop subject matter which I find has poetic and philosophical purpose in regard to contemporary identity. After the photography becomes mounted on the canvas, I write texts with ink on the canvas with poetic passages which ambiguously describe the subject. Upon the remaining surface, loose ‘sketches’ are made with various materials which helps deconstruct the physical aspects of the subject. The entire process, from capturing the subject, to deconstruction with a sketch, to philosophical scribing, entails a method steeped in a heightened sense of individualism in regard to image-making. My photography contains no Photoshop alteration and without any other digital enhancement in order to provide a documentary experience of a raw image. Various materials contained within my assemblages have specific conceptual purposes. For example, I often take photographs of aquatic life from aquariums and the watery mists of beach shores. As a result, the sea glass and crushed glass I use has a connotation with ocean and rain water because of the reflective shine which resembles the glistening glow of light penetrating aqua. In addition, glass comes from sand and sand comes from the beach, another direct conceptual reference. Satin becomes used to convey a theatrical display. The fabric is often applied to the surface of my work in a manner similar to the drapery of a theatre stage. Also, satin is generally regarded as a luxurious and fine material which reflects the value I have towards my subject matter, as elements which are sacred. Additionally, assemblages containing photographs of chalices with sea glass, crushed glass inserted in the interior with colorful fluids amongst satin fabric displays, surrounded by glass are conceptual in nature. These temporary installations (or still lifes) are a commentary on contemporary mythological rejuvenation, a fountain of youth, but with a catch. Broken glass stirs emotions of danger, however the goblets filled with sparkling, colored, reflective glass with suggestively colorful sweet-colored liquids evoke mythological risk-taking allegorically seeking glory akin to Ancient Greek heroes such as Heracles, Achilles, Atalanta, and Perseus. During the process of capturing selective imagery from my daily life, experiences, and travel with photography, I build upon the image by fusing the photographs with integrative ‘material drawings’ which establish new angles, perspectives, texture, and surfaces in which to engage the subject matter. The combinative and organic work becomes defined by process as even the written texts become open to individual interpretation by the viewer. As a writer and publisher, the written word has important symbolic significance to my identity. The writing first becomes dictated through improvisation and scribbled onto the canvas, smeared with gesso, and then rewritten on top with an edited version. By fusing written text with image-making, I create a conscious interpretation of my artistic methods in real-time. Besides the literal attributions, the works are also metaphorical assemblages because they integrate three artforms containing photography, drawing, and creative writing into one cohesive work of art. Combining the intense power of realism with photography, the interpretative energy of the written word and expressive drawing, the assemblage constructs a bridge through the deconstruction of observable subject matter into forms of new visual and improvised consumption. 

 Unedited photography, sea glass, crushed glass, satin, ink, matboard, adhesive, and varnish on canvas.

 Brick, New Jersey, USA
 

 Acrylic marker & acrylic paint

 Hawthorne, FL. USA