Some people learn to control their emotions.
At one point, I learned to paint mine.

I grew up with a clear dream. As a child, I wanted to create. To make things that came from imagination and curiosity. But in an entrepreneurial family, I was taught that creativity wasn’t a career. That it didn’t offer security. That it wasn’t something you could build a life on. So I let my dream go. Not dramatically and not overnight, but by slowly turning away from it.

I chose responsibility, structure and certainty instead. And I became good at it. From the outside, everything looked solid as a rock. Decisions were made with reason and my days were filled with business plans, financial targets and expectations. I was building something dependable.

Yet underneath it all, something in me stayed restless; a small ember that never fully went out.

I ignored it for years. Until I couldn’t anymore.

In my late forties, at a moment when most people tighten their grip, I did the opposite. I let go. Not because of a midlife crisis or the fact that I was chasing freedom, but because staying had started to cost me more than leaving. What I felt couldn’t be explained or negotiated. It needed space and I needed air.

So I sold my shares and stepped away from the family business. Not toward a clear plan, but toward honesty.

That’s when painting entered my life.

Painting gave shape to what I had carried inside me for years without language. It gave direction to emotions I had learned to control instead of feel. What began as a way to cope, slowly became my way to speak.

What started quietly, caught fire.

My work begins where language ends. What appears on my canvas isn’t decoration, it’s what burns underneath. Raw emotion. Personal transformation. The courage to feel what you’d rather silence.

I didn’t go to art school. My path wasn’t straight and I’m glad it wasn’t. It's the reason I don’t paint to prove anything today. I paint because this is what happens when I stop playing safe.

The work I make is inseparable from my journey. It’s the result of listening to that ember instead of smothering it.

My biggest lesson?
Once you give fire oxygen, it will always show you where it wants to go.