My journey into visual art didn’t begin in a studio or an academy—it began in a first-grade classroom. One day, I asked my students to stare at a single point on the whiteboard and tell me what animal they saw. Their answers, wildly creative and entirely unique, sparked something in me. That moment revealed a truth I hadn’t fully grasped: the raw, collaborative power of imagination and the capacity of visual interpretation to transcend boundaries. Drawing for my students—and seeing how they reinterpreted my crude lines into meaningful forms—planted the seeds for my current practice.

This was more than an artistic awakening; it was a redefinition of my teaching philosophy. I began integrating drawing into my lessons, not as a tool to entertain but as a way to unlock new forms of learning and self-expression. From these early experiments, I saw how art could stimulate curiosity and provide a visual language for ideas that words often fail to capture.

Without any formal training, I leaned into drawing as a daily practice. Early on, I sketched monsters to teach body parts to my Spanish students—grotesque, awkward forms that made my students laugh and engage. During breaks, I found myself drawn to coloring pages torn from old magazines, which led to experimenting with fashion photography, posters, and calendars. There was no structure or “plan” to this—it was purely exploratory, compulsive even. Yet each image I colored, each line I drew, added another layer to what was becoming a personal and deeply meaningful process.

A turning point came when I created my first sketchbooks. Using old paper, I stitched together six small booklets and began filling them with drawings. The third booklet stood out. Each page contained variations of a recurring jar-like figure. At the time, I wasn’t sure what I was creating, but I knew it felt like the start of something significant. Intrigued, I brought the booklet to school and shared it with my students. I gathered a group of lower-grade students and asked a simple question as I showed them each drawing: “What do you see?” Their responses were profound. They didn’t just see shapes or objects—they saw narratives, connections, and meanings I hadn’t anticipated. They built off one another’s observations, constructing stories that imbued the images with life. What I had inadvertently done was recreate the dialogic energy I had once fostered with university students analyzing literature, but now through the lens of visual art. It was a moment of synthesis—a merging of teaching, storytelling, and image-making.

By 2017, my drawing practice became inseparable from my daily life. While teaching at a school in Manhattan, my hour-long commute from Bed-Stuy to 96th Street on the C train became my studio. In the rhythmic motion of the subway, surrounded by the anonymity of the city, I filled sketchbooks with dark, surreal, and often chaotic images. These drawings weren’t concerned with perfection or tradition. They were raw, exploratory, and deeply intuitive—unfolding from a place of visceral curiosity. Over time, the act of drawing became a ritual. Whether I was on the train, waiting in line, or sitting in a park, my pen and sketchbook were always with me.

This obsessive practice was never about “becoming an artist” in the conventional sense. I had no mentors, no formal schooling, and no roadmap. Instead, I followed a primal impulse, guided by the art I’ve admired, the music I love, the poetry I’ve consumed, and the natural world that inspires me. This lack of formal constraints allowed me to approach drawing with total freedom—an act unburdened by expectations or rules.

What emerged is a body of work that resists easy categorization. My images are shaped as much by the everyday—the energy of children, the rhythm of the subway, the tactile quality of paper—as they are by the profound: the philosophical texts I’ve studied, the films I revere, and the art that has moved me. My drawings exist in a space that is simultaneously playful and introspective, strange yet familiar. They invite viewers to step into their own imaginations, to find connections and meanings that are deeply personal.

Everything you see here—on this webpage, in my sketchbooks, or on my social platforms—was born out of this compulsion to create. It is not a polished or calculated process but an honest one. I owe it to the poetry I’ve read, the music that has moved me, and the students who showed me that creativity flourishes when given the space to roam freely.

If there’s one thing my journey demonstrates, it’s that art doesn’t require permission or pedigree. It demands only presence—a willingness to see, to create, and to allow meaning to emerge.