Borders

(2022)


Medium:

Oil paint on wood panel

Dimensions:

48" x 36"

Description

  With each new phase of life, our relationship with identity can shift, or become a never-ending, run-on sentence. When I made this painting in 2022, I had just moved to Barcelona for art school. I wanted to express the discomfort I felt around supposed boundaries: the ones that define who I was, who I am, and who I wanted to be.	

At the time, I craved an identity I could hold on to, something that felt solid and truly mine. But “this” and “that” never seemed to suffice, and the desire remained. In a universe with no real boundaries, the urge to box myself in persisted. I questioned whether this was my search for comfort; a comfort that, in the end, only limited my world. A world where I confused the words and beliefs of others for my own.

I wondered if I was pressuring myself to exist in a certain way, chasing approval and validation instead of listening inward. Perhaps the end of individuality is a kind of death: the realization that I am one with everyone and everything around me. But… I’m too scared to die, so I continue to chase after an identity that will never stay fixed. 

This painting became a visual reflection of that tension. Pressed against shifting boundaries, slipping between distortion and clarity as I reached for a self that was constantly moving.