Mexico

My oil painting is exploring the precarious and bound state of humans and nature, in which “human” can no longer be considered other than “nature” but an interconnected system of being. A new state where entropic forces are driving toward chaos. In 2024 and 2025 for a total of five months, I painted a Mexican Hillside in Puerta Vallarta, a fishing village that has been heavily gentrified by American and Canadian tourists over the past 40 years. The steep streets in the Alta Vista neighborhood are alive with action—chickens, barking dogs, revving cars, partying tourists, street vendors and buildings stacked up like Jenga blocks ready to topple at any moment. A mountainess jungle creeping over lava-formed mountains threatens to take over anything that doesn’t move.