Mandevilla Mornings

In the summer, my sister and mother have gardens around their porches. They set out sizable planters with mandevilla, rosemary, and grasses. I’ve spent many mornings at their homes watching the morning light hit and the wind blow through them.

I’ve been drawing these flowering mandevilla vines, and they capture my attention with showy blooms and endless roping. I consider the trellis they grow upon, and how they depend on that structure within to pop their florals to the sun.

First sketches and tracing the drawing onto Yupo.

Caught, 2024
watercolor on yupo

 

One day, I realized the metaphor of inner strength that the trellis could represent, and I started sketching figures within the plants to take their place. Sometimes twisted and bound inside, they create the necessary base for blossoms to thrive.

Sometimes I get caught up in everything and feel the need to untangle myself, and it isn’t always possible without breaking a few ties. But it always feels important to balance pruning for future blooms and letting the vines take over for a while.

Grown, 2024
watercolor on yupo

Mermaids

It’s a subject known throughout the world, in all ancient civilizations, and discredited only by modern society—the power of the siren call, the half-human and half-sea creature guiding people to their demise. This phenomenon exists, tied to adventure, mystery, ocean, song, and also to the divine feminine.

 

My brush guides me, conjuring images from the pools of color and water. And sometimes I wonder why mermaids remain firmly entrenched in our collective consciousness, yet we dismiss their existence as mere myths.

Every day that I am in my studio, a mermaid appears. This pose contains a few examples, and here are more sketches and paintings.

My Song

Below are the illustration, text, and collage artwork inspired by a piece of art in the African collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

My Song

The sun is warming my skin,
And wet greens surround me.
My soul finds peace here,
I don’t speak—I listen.

I sit quietly among the chattering oaks,
The breezy willows,
The clicking switchgrass,
And the swaying cattails.

I watch the raindrops gently fall on each leaf.
They collect into tiny pools,
Trickle and travel the veins,
Then quickly dance to the ground.

After long contemplation  
That centers my spirit, 
I return to my village.
And I howl from my heart—I sing. 

To purchase the booklet or art prints, please visit the shop page.

Gardens

I’m thinking of adding more to my garden series while Spring blooms all around us in New York. The series contains oil paintings and drawings with pastels and watercolors on paper. The artwork depicted what I saw within the gardens- the colors, the light reflected on form, and the kinetic energy that they manifested within themselves. These are gardens that I painted that began within my old home of the East Village, and they continued onward to Brooklyn, where I envisioned the energy within the concrete yards of Clinton Hill.

Below are some of the pastel drawings of the garden series. I switched from pastel to watercolor and attempted to capture the brightness and beauty of the colors that I saw and felt while I focused in on little details of nature that grew within our very urban landscape.