Born in 1972 in Torrance, California, I was drawn to art and literature from an early age. My first encounters were with Japanese art, the poetry of Omar Khayyam, and the fantastical narratives of the Brothers Grimm. These early impressions instilled a lasting fascination with beauty, myth, and the human condition.

Entirely self-taught, I learned outside traditional structures, preferring independence, observation, and experimentation. As a child I sketched female figures on walls; by adolescence I had discovered a deep love of writing. At eighteen, I had read the complete works of Shakespeare and Pablo Neruda, and in my early twenties I was producing stories and poems in abundance.

My current practice includes a manuscript of 105 poems exploring the many dimensions of love, alongside new series of gold-leaf paintings and digitally composed studio photographs. I also write essays as a form of dialogue with the world—on perception, tenderness, and the intersections of art and society.

In parallel, I am developing two long-term projects: a collection of “complaint-and-blood” essays interrogating creative labor and the body, and a book of psychological horror stories that began in the 1990s.

Formative influences range widely: Persian poets Omar Khayyam and Hafez; Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Emily Dickinson; the visual worlds of Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, and Sarkis Katchadourian; and the narrative artistry of Walt Disney and global folklore. What connects them for me is not only style, but intensity; the ability to compress truth, beauty, and violence into forms that remain unforgettable. That same intensity is what I seek in my own practice.