"Painting the figure is a conversation — between the subject, the energy in the room, and where the paint takes me. the Beauty becomes a portal into what's beyond the canvas, an act of rebellion."

I've known I was an artist since I was a child. Growing up in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village as the daughter of immigrants — shaped by the strength and survival of my heritage. Drawing was my refuge, my language, and my superpower. Art gave me a way to belong, to claim my identity, and to make sense of the world around me. That relationship with art as a lifeline has never left me.

At the age of eleven, I began live figure drawing training at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago — an institution that shaped not just my technique but my belief that art is where I belong. I later earned my MFA there, and hold a BA in Visual Communications from the Colorado Institute of Art. My background spans both fine art and visual design, and I've learned to let structure and instinct work together rather than choosing between them.

My paintings explore the dualities of feminine power — as both vulnerable and formidable — a force of creation, intuition, and resistance. The figures I paint are archetypes, not individuals. They hold emotional states — strength, defiance, vulnerability, protection — and act as portals, inviting the viewer to recognize something of themselves in the work. I use beauty intentionally, as a strategy to draw you in, a doorway — not the destination. What you find on the other side is a view into the layered realities of the human experience through a female lens. I work primarily in oil on linen and wood, building tactile surfaces where paint moves with a sense of temperature, terrain, and growth. 

As a woman and a creative professional who has spent years navigating spaces not always built for people like me, I paint what I know: that feminine power is not performance. It is elemental. It is the energy that runs beneath the surface of things — through every room a woman walks into. My work is a celebration of that. A reminder that we are connected and powerful beyond what the world often tells us.

My work has been exhibited nationally and featured by NBC News, the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, and Google Intersection, and lives in public spaces, and private and corporate collections in the US and abroad. I'm based in the San Francisco Bay Area and take on a limited number of commissions each year.