Big news: I took home a Talent Prize!

It all started last year while prepping for my workshop at the New York Botanical Garden. I sculpted dozens of bearded irises, obsessing over every petal, curve, and vein. I even hauled myself to The Met to study Van Gogh’s original Irises in person, getting lost in those electric blue-violet strokes.

Afterward, all those practice blooms sat around my studio apartment, literally staring at me. Then one night, half-asleep, it hit me: why leave them in a jar when they could explode off a canvas?

A full year in the making, this is the very first piece in my new series: A Dialogue with the Masters.

The idea? Reimagining iconic masterpieces as punchy, tactile, dimensional wall art.

To bring it to life, I broke away from a flat surface:

• The Canvas: I took a solid birch wood panel and loosely blocked in Van Gogh’s composition with acrylics, building layer over layer of rich, bold color to get a saturated background vibrating with energy.
• The Vessel: A flat painted vase wouldn't cut it. I built out the vase directly on the panel using modeling clay to give it genuine physical presence and raw earthenware texture, then painted right over it to blend seamlessly into the brushwork.
• The Blooms: Finally, the showstoppers. I mounted my hand-sculpted clay irises right across the board, weaving painted stems into fully dimensional, sculptural petals that literally reach out into the room.

I submitted the finished piece to an international competition, and it ended up winning a Talent Prize!

You can check out my piece alongside the other winners in the virtual exhibition gallery here.

Now the fun part - what comes next? Should I take on Renoir, or is there another master calling my name?