I started painting in 2016, in high school. I didn’t go to art school — I got my B.A. (in urbanism) from Columbia University in 2021 — but here I am, still painting. 

I’ve spent years trying to explain, in words, just what it is I find so unbearably moving about the built environment. But no matter how long I wax about the brick and the concrete and the late afternoon sunlight, I never feel like I’m getting anything across. So, I paint. 

I could call my works musings on the ravages of capitalism, I could call them tributes to a long-abandoned American dream, but in all honesty, I just love these places. They make me happy and they break my heart: at the end of the day, I’m painting Arcadia, albeit post-apocalypse.