Artist Statement 2023

I create small scale drawings and paintings using analog and digital art tools. My work is twofold and requires approaches and creative processes specific to either commission or illustration work. Though disparate in nature and purpose, these two aspects often inform the other, functioning symbiotically to provide the practical means and creative formats for continued artistic growth.

Commission work provides income and everyday technical practice in watercolor. Subject matter can be repetitive and separate from my personal tastes and views. The emotional distance from the work in painting someone else’s vision lets me focus on mechanics and handling the material. Watercolor is a physically wily medium and demands artistic integrity in its stepwise and layering process. Early on I learned how each progressive step is only as good as the last. Watercolor painting is how I feel both confident and humbled; the more mechanical mastery I gain, the more I realize how many lifetimes it will take to master this medium. Painting on demand with rapid turnaround provides breaks from longer term illustration projects and the glacial pace of industry publishing. My creativity is applied not to the product, but to crafting a unique process to make such a product profitable. This involves imaginative problem solving in the endless endeavor to paint as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

Illustration work is a realm in which I’m freer to experiment artistically and exert myself as an activist artist. Here artistic skills become the incidental tools used to convey textual themes in narrative art and storytelling. Illustration work is a return to my academic roots in interdisciplinary cultural studies in which I explored themes of Americanness using text and image – I not only wanted to explore topics through the act of making art, but I also wanted to show that making art in this context belonged in academia and can be an effective tool for scholarly inquiry and analysis. Growing up Asian-American and the ongoing lack of diverse books in children’s publishing has also shaped my conceptual trajectory in illustration. With support and influence from organizations like We Need Diverse Books, my refined focus is to make books that feature diverse characters, telling stories universal to all kids and not didactic of diversity itself, e.g., the kind of books I longed for as a kid and now want to make as an adult.