I never studied painting. I don't know the theories, the movements, the terminology. What I know is this: in 2021, I watched a video of oil pastels and something shifted inside me.

By 2022 I had picked up acrylic. I painted on raw fabric without preparation, without knowing what gesso was, without understanding that I wasn't painting shapes — I was painting shadows. That discovery changed everything.

I paint by erasing. If something doesn't feel right, I wipe it away and start again. No one sees how many times a painting was undone before it became what it is. Only the result remains.

When I paint, I go somewhere else. I only know it came from somewhere real — from gratitude, from grief, from the breath that nature gives, from the freedom of rain, from loss, from light at the end of every road.

I paint because I believe: if you focus on the light, you will find it.

That's how belonging feels.