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     As a Boston native, it's impossible to not be inspired by the energy and life in the city. The lights, music and nightlife are what really fuel my work. Being of Puerto Rican and Black descent leaves me with a large amount of culture to draw from, culminating into the paintings 

I create today. The bright colors and movements in my work are inspired by the movement of my city. 

I was taught to see all painting as abstract, whether I'm working with recognizable imagery or not. The work strays towards what I consider to be “pure” abstraction, where there's little to no recognizable imagery, but instead is a field of impasto marks and bright moments of color. Working with mixed media broadens opportunities for me to be more flexible with my work, as I am  able to bounce between using paint, collage and drawing elements in my work. 

     It’s very important to me that I paint almost instinctively, trying to remove the burden of whatever insecurities or self doubt comes with finishing and showing work. As a child, I can remember sitting on the beach with my fingers in the sand. I wasn't making anything to impress or shock, there was no goal. I was just there, and I did it because I could. That is the honesty I strive for in my work. The more academic way of thinking is there and always shows itself, but in the moment as I dance with my canvas, it feels as if I am the brush, and have little say in what the end result looks like. 

     The work of Hans Hoffmen was a direct inspiration in this body of work. Hoffman's aggressive use of color and attitude towards making art is something I incorporate in my own paintings. Hoffman was an artist who never felt the need to label different ways of painting. In a conversation between Tim Harney and Lydia Gordan, Harney spoke on Hoffman saying “ He could be working on a figurative work and the next day, purely abstract. They didn't make those distinctions, those distinctions are nonsense. They were making paintings.”