Growing up between 2002 and 2020 felt like living through a world in constant flux—caught in the delicate balance between the fading analog childhood of the early 2000s and the rise of a hyper-connected digital age. It was a time of transformation, and in many ways, my art has become my way of holding onto those shifting moments. I was a kid in a world where I accessed internet through my old DSI. The first time I encountered a Wi-Fi symbol felt like the gateway to an entirely new universe. I remember the thrill of waiting for my first iPod to load, my fingers hesitating as I chose my very first song, or how the pixels loaded while playing Minecraft with my family and friends. It felt like magic in the palm of my hand. As I got older, the world grew increasingly virtual, and by the time I was a teenager, everything felt broadcasted, shared, and scrutinized. The digital era really took root, and social media came into its own with Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and Vine—each new platform offering a new way to express identity, to curate a persona.

The nostalgia in my paintings reflects the way those years evolved in my mind—a collision of memories and images that don’t always line up neatly but feel deeply connected to who I am. I paint with saturated, glitchy colors that mimic the rush of emotions we felt back then, often drawn from the fragmented moments of digital life: viral memes, emojis, and Instagram filters. I use these elements to represent how we lived at the intersection of real and virtual worlds—constantly online, yet still experiencing real-life milestones in the flesh. My work often focuses on that push-and-pull of wanting to be part of the digital narrative, but also wanting to hold onto the intimacy and the chaos of a childhood before every single moment had to be shared. The painted faces in my work are sometimes obscured, just like how we learned to mask our true selves behind avatars, but they’re also deeply alive, illuminated by the neon of nostalgia. In capturing those fleeting fragments of time, I find myself longing for both the simplicity of the early 2000s and the vibrancy of adolescence in the 2010s—a time when everything felt new and infinite, but at the same time, already slipping through our fingers. These paintings, for me, are a love letter to that complicated, beautiful era—a reminder of how we grew up, and how we continue to remember it.