Fine Art

The Synthesis of Making and Thinking

My teaching philosophy is rooted in the belief that technical mastery and conceptual depth are inseparable. I view the studio as a laboratory where making is itself a form of inquiry, not just a means of execution. Drawing from my own background as a nationally exhibited painter and sculptor, illustrator, and front-end developer, I guide students to move fluidly between disciplines — helping them see each new tool or medium not as a hurdle, but as an expansion of a creative vocabulary they already have.

My teaching is grounded in the foundational: color theory, figure drawing, and observational structure. As a teaching assistant for Pratt's foundational Drawing and Color Theory courses, I saw firsthand that technical fluency in line, value, and color relationships is what frees a student to say something with intention, rather than getting in their way. I treat the creative process as a series of prototypes — whether a student is working in charcoal, paint, or code, I emphasize a mindset that welcomes iteration, and I use critique as a generative tool to interrogate the decisions behind the work, not just to evaluate the final product.

As a practitioner of House dance and Capoeira alongside painting and sculpture, I believe bodily knowledge and visual thinking are inseparable — a conviction shaped by embodied cognition and the belief that gesture, rhythm, and physical narrative are how we come to understand form in the first place. I bring this into the classroom by encouraging students to draw and build with their whole body, not just their eye, and to treat physical engagement with material as part of the thinking process.

My own practice moves between traditional media and digital tools without treating either as more legitimate than the other. I want students to carry that same range with them — comfortable putting in the hours at the easel or the model stand, and equally comfortable picking up new software or platforms as they arise, because the underlying skills of observation, composition, and intentionality transfer across all of it.

I also encourage students to look to their own lived experience and community for material, and to bring care to how they work with each other in critique. Having tutored need-based students through Pratt's Learning and Access Center, I've learned how much it matters to meet students where they are and to make foundational skills feel accessible rather than gatekept. That accessibility, paired with rigor, is what I aim to bring into every classroom I teach in.