Nina Pet Portrait

I painted this as a gift, starting with photobashed references and building out the scene from there. I added water, birds, ruins, and subtle hue shifts throughout to make it feel a little surreal—like a dream you can almost remember. The elephant is the centerpiece, standing calm in the middle of something ancient and overgrown….

This cow made me smile the second I saw it, and I kept smiling the entire time I painted it. I wanted something that felt jolly and ridiculous in the best way—so I leaned into the exaggerated perspective, pushed the colors brighter, and gave the snoot all the wet, shiny detail it deserved. The curls…

This was a gift for an ex—kind of. We went on a date to the koi pond at Hahn Horticulture Garden, and I was inspired to paint this. It was my first time trying to date seriously, and I did everything “right,” waiting for feelings to show up. They didn’t. He didn’t. I let him…

This was the biggest canvas I’d ever worked on back in high school, and I went all in. I wanted to paint a sunbeam—one of those quiet, golden ones that slips into a dark room and makes everything feel like magic. The dust in the light was key: I painted it like specks of gold,…

This painting began as an exercise in light, but it turned into something gentler — a moment of calm between the shepherd and his flock. I wanted the morning to feel new, fragile, and full of quiet purpose. The figures don’t speak, yet their closeness says enough. The shepherd looks at his sheep, and not…