Burn out
Oil on canvas 18” x 24” summer 2025
In this self-portrait, I confront the looming fear of college burnout and the emotional weight of time slipping away. The rising smoke above my head symbolizes the sense that I’m on a timer—that my college experience is burning down like a lit cigarette. The hand offering me a cigarette illustrates my turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms in response to academic pressure and anxiety, even though I know these habits deepen the cycle of stress.
This piece stems from a deeper insecurity: the fear that my ambition will consume me before I can accomplish what I set out to do. I often feel too anxious to be productive, trapped in a spiral of pressure, procrastination, and self-doubt. In many ways, I see myself as the cigarette—once full of purpose, now slowly burning out, destined to be used up and discarded. Burn Out visualizes this internal struggle, the pressure to make my time in college meaningful, and the uncertainty of what comes after.
Tea Party
Oil on canvas 18” x 24” summer 2025
Tea Party is an abstract meditation on the tension between life and death, beauty and decay. At the center of the piece, tea is poured through the top of a dog’s skull—an image that invites the viewer to question where the line is drawn between the living and the lifeless. The fluid’s flow through the skull suggests emptiness, a vessel long since hollowed out. Even so, the dog’s faint expression and the appearance of translucent, stretched skin hint at reanimation.
Surrounding the skull, abstract star-like forms hover between symbols of decomposition and sparks of residual energy. These contradictory elements create a space where the natural and the supernatural coexist.
The pastel color palette and dainty teacups offer a gentle, even whimsical aesthetic from a distance, but as the viewer draws closer, the unsettling centerpiece disrupts this fantasy narrative.
