this was one of the first paintings I'd made that I still like! back then, I'd felt like ever since I left home my life had become... boring. at the time it was January, and my mind went to less boring (and happier) Januaries...

I thought of the way the cold air back home used to hit my face on the bike ride to school and the way if I woke up early enough on the weekends, I got to see the windows still glazed with condensation, making everything outside look blurry and new. I thought of falling in love for the first time and how much It made me look forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays, because those were the days when I knew I would see my crush at school. (Nothing important happens in January; therefore, everything important happens in January.)

pictured: cold air

being awake too late was a source of anxiety growing up--for whatever reason, I had this panic that if I wasn't asleep by midnight, bad things would happen. I think it arose out of the fact that for most people, late nights were some kind of "failure": Procrastination, insomnia, degeneracy, something like that. and like most children of immigrants, fear of failure had been drilled into me like nothing else...

until something changed in the last few months of high school. that was when my parents and I finally gave up on each other, marking my first opportunity ever to just--well--live life. at that point, nighttime went from trouble time to eating homemade chocolate cake out of the fridge, finally being able to read in peace, and just looking out the window and being mesmerized by the great night sky.

pictured: window curtains at night

that comic I mentioned finding in the library? Yep, I made a painting out of it. the name and subject of this painting are references to the manga.

I used to be really embarassed that I read manga as a kid. It was a combination of many things, including some degree of internalized anti-Asian sentiment (manga's for weebs, am I right??).

I remember a friend unsuccessfully trying to pry the name of my old favorite manga out of me barely a year before this happened. It was funny--how fiercely I guarded that secret right up until the day where I fell in love with it again.

pictured: fighting fish

I made this painting during a time where I was extremely overworked, not eating, and alone. Those conditions made it easy to entertain late-night delusions of finding the the cold walls of the otherwise-empty studio to be a kind of company as steadfast as Charlotte of Charlotte's Web.

(Obviously I knew it was not real, but sometimes it's nice to pretend...)

pictured: the moon, the sky, a thread

osgiliath, the first capital of Gondor, was a once-magnificent port city that had long since wasted by the time the lord of the rings takes place.

this painting always makes me think of my time visiting Osgiliath in the Lego: Lord of the Rings video game... I think it's because both of them involve being alone in an area of once great activity, and feeling like you're surrounded by ghosts. that's how I felt when I painted this and that's what I was trying to capture, anyhow.

fun fact: this painting took a month to dry because it was made using such a high ratio of solvent to paint. A bug drowned in the solvent during the process.

pictured: N/A

someone I knew died suddenly of cancer less than three months after he graduated. It made me reflect on the fact that you can do work as hard as you want trying to secure your future, but when it comes down to it, none of us can do a thing if life decides you're destined to die young.

pictured: iron gates and stained glass

wondering where the leaves have swept the people that I used to know.

one weekend, I spent the morning watching a baby rat in the parking lot of my apartment. A fly kept trying to land on it (and I kept swatting it away). The fly probably knew, unlike me, that death was imminent. Turns out I was watching that rat's last 15 minutes of life.

The Rainbow Bridge, according to poem, is where beloved pets go after they die. Who gives a sendoff to a sewer rat?

pictured: the stuff of dreams

I'd just moved into my own place and didn't have nearly enough space to make art the way I had in college, so I started making these little cards. I think there were over 100 by the end, although only a few are pictured here. The idea was that each of them was a tiny window into life as I was experiencing it, but when you combined them together, they became something greater.

pictured: a star, a bird, a pencil case, a girl (and more)

I didn't draw a fire-breathing dragon, but I see one. It's one of those instances, y'know?

sometimes, people ask me if I do "oc's" (original characters). It mostly refers to hobbyists drawing personas to self-insert into fictional universes, and I usually laugh and regret to inform them that no, I do not do "oc's". though, I suppose this girl is as close as it gets. she's appeared in two different drawings. I'll leave her design open to interpretation.