Returning to old work can feel like thumbing through the pages of a journal. Even without words, there’s a pull — the waxing and waning of emotions that were present at the moment of creation. Memory lives in the body as much as it does in language. You remember without needing to explain.
Mystery, 2012
Digital painting
Mystery is one of those works for me. Created in 2012, it came from an early period of experimentation with Corel Painter and Photoshop — blending and bending layers, painting with pixels, manipulating forms to create something I couldn’t fully articulate but could feel. It remains one of my favorite pieces because of the fragments it holds. There is something unresolved there, but in a way that feels honest rather than incomplete.
One of my ongoing struggles as a digital artist has been how to bring my work into view beyond the screen it was created on — how to let it exist in the physical world. Digital art is often heavily criticized, and for a long time I carried those doubts quietly with me. Over time, I’ve learned to notice those thoughts without letting them determine the direction of my work. Instead, I’ve tried to focus on the work itself, and on how it wants to be seen.
Lately, I’ve been drawn toward the idea of bringing my digital work into a physical form — experimenting with printing on canvas and considering how subtle hand-applied marks and acrylic gel might extend the work beyond the screen. While this is a familiar practice for many digital artists, for me it feels personal — a way of honoring pieces that have lived only as pixels for years.
In some ways, this process feels like a return. A chance to revisit earlier works that I was once hesitant to share — the figures, the forms, the parts I couldn’t explain at the time. There is vulnerability in that. But it feels necessary. Not as a correction, but as a continuation.
These pieces hold countless hours — late nights painting with a Wacom tablet, building layers slowly, often accompanied by a glass of wine and quiet focus. Revisiting them now, I feel less concerned with explanation and more interested in presence. In allowing the work to exist fully, in a form that feels grounded and lived in.
Not everything needs to be understood to be honored.
