Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS We live in a world where we have both been the recipient of "We're always here for you" and the sender of "We're always here for you." I no longer hear those words because I've learned not to present myself in ways that invite them. Maybe I realized too early that people being there for me never fundamentally changed anything. Or maybe I simply stopped wanting help. Perhaps it was just a phase. I don't know. For the longest time,

Acrylic on canvas / 24x24 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS In fourth grade, after summer break, Phoebe came back to school without her mother. I didn't understand grief, so I mistook distance for kindness. My friends and I orbited around her, always close enough to notice, never close enough to speak. She began wearing the same clothes every day. The braid she used to wear so neatly slowly unraveled into something nobody seemed to fix. She stopped talking. She stopped dancing. She stoppe

Acrylic on canvas / 24x24 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS I grew up hunting for things I could call home. Not because I was never given one, but because even at home, I often felt like something didn’t quite recognize me back. I learned early how to exist inside a place without fully belonging to it, like I was always a step off from where I was supposed to stand. Homesick for something that had not been made yet, something just out of reach but close enough to ache for. So I started co

Acrylic on canvas / 30x40 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS Some children grow up believing love is something that must be earned carefully. Not through honesty, but through usefulness. They learn very early how to read a room before they learn how to understand themselves. They notice which emotions make adults distant, which needs create tension, which parts of their personality feel inconvenient to other people. So they begin adjusting. Becoming easier. Quieter. More helpful. Less visi

Acrylic on canvas / 24x30 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS Love can grant a kind of delusional power, the kind that keeps a person moving even when reality has already begun to rupture. I once saw a car smoking on the shoulder of a highway while traffic screamed past in waves. A father and his little girl stood against the concrete barrier waiting for help, exposed to breakdown, noise, and uncertainty. But he placed headphones over her ears and let her disappear into a small glowing scre

Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS One time at an airport late at night, on my way out of a place I no longer recognized as home, I stood in front of a vending machine trying to buy a Diet Pepsi. I inserted $1.25. The can dropped halfway, then got trapped behind a warped plastic panel that looked as if it had been damaged years ago and simply absorbed into the architecture of the machine. I remember how disproportionate my anger felt. I shook the machine. Kicked i

Acrylic on canvas / 24x24 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS Since then, I keep thinking about the word end. Not death. Not grief. Just end. A small word for something large enough to erase a person. I keep wondering how someone becomes familiar enough with their own ending that it no longer feels like a stranger. I imagine it as a dark tunnel. Bare feet against cold concrete. A place you have never been before yet somehow recognize. You hear your own name echoing from the other side, just

Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS Attempt means trying something for the first time. It doesn’t say what you are trying, but it always feels like it carries more weight than it should. In life, we are always attempting something whether we notice it or not. Everything that feels natural now was once unfamiliar. We learned how to walk without knowing if we would fall, how to speak while holding eye contact, how to lie to protect ourselves or to protect someone els

Acrylic on canvas / 24x30 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS After walking for hours in the middle of the night alone because my room kept getting smaller and smaller, morning subtly but surely arrived. The blue crisp air at 3am slowly turned into warm yellow sunlight as if nothing had happened the night before. As if that night never existed. It almost felt violent how warm that Saturday morning was. Birds chirped like they were in a fairy tale and I was just there in the background, stan

Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS The darkness isn’t sudden. It’s complete. It fills everything evenly, like a condition rather than an event. There is no moment you can point to and say this is when it began. It simply becomes the environment. You are still expected to look for light. Not because it promises escape, but because searching has been assigned meaning. Stopping would look like surrender. So when something flickers, small and inconsistent, you treat i

Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS I used to believe my dreams were destinations. Clear places that existed somewhere ahead of me, waiting to be reached. I thought if I was disciplined enough, patient enough, resilient enough, I would eventually arrive at the life I had rehearsed in my mind so many times. The future felt structured. Earnable. Predictable. But life rarely unfolds in straight lines. It drifts. It interrupts. It alters direction quietly, sometimes wi

Acrylic on canvas / 24x30 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS Muni in San Francisco during rush hour feels like a holding place. Too many people, not enough air. Bodies lined up in motion, eyes trained forward, everyone agreeing not to look too closely. Each person carries a life shaped by choices, accidents, and things they never consented to. Some arrived where they hoped to be. Others are still being pulled forward by necessity. But everyone carries something forward too. A plan, a wish,

Acrylic on canvas / 24x30 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS A few years ago, I revisited the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I was reminded that they once kept great white sharks there, from 2004 to 2011. Even with one of the largest tanks in the world, even with constant care and precision, it was not enough. Over time, the sharks showed signs of stress. Not something most visitors could point to, but something the body remembers. Movement became inefficient. Living became effortful. The tank did

Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS I think the first time I learned what death was happened when my grandfather passed away. I did not understand the rules of it. I only understood that his body stopped behaving the way it was supposed to. Breathing became difficult. Being awake became exhausting. I watched him fail at things he had done his entire life without thinking, and no one could explain why that failure was permanent. I kept waiting for it to reverse. I k