Blaffer Museum Project

How to Fly (2026)

MFA Thesis Exhibition — Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston

"How to Fly" came from thinking about what happens after survival. After the climb. After the version of yourself that was just trying to make it through. I wasn’t interested in painting triumph as loud or aggressive. I wanted to explore power at rest. Suspension. Stillness. The moment where you finally exhale.

A lot of these works live between worlds — between earth and sky, labor and release, reality and imagination. Figures float, lean, ascend, disappear into darkness, or emerge from light. Some feel monumental and mythological, while others feel deeply intimate and vulnerable. I wanted the exhibition to feel cinematic but emotional at the same time, like stepping into somebody’s interior world.

Growing up moving across countries and military bases shaped the way I think about space, longing, and transformation. Home was never fixed for me, so I became interested in creating emotional architecture through painting and drawing — spaces that feel protective, spiritual, suspended. The figures become symbols for desire, faith, exhaustion, ambition, and becoming.

Light plays a huge role in the work. I think about light almost like music. I want it to move across the body in a way that feels alive, sensual, and transcendent. Influences from Baroque painting, allegory, and Black figurative traditions all exist inside the work, but I also think about contemporary image culture, performance, fashion, and spectacle. I want the paintings to feel ancient and futuristic at the same time.

Showing this body of work at the Blaffer felt deeply personal. The exhibition became a reflection on what it means to keep imagining yourself beyond limitation — to remain soft while still reaching toward something immense. "How to Fly" is ultimately about longing, transformation, and the emotional weightlessness that can exist on the other side of struggle.