I came into the art world with nothing — a man trying to find his place in a world that had already taken more than it had ever given. When the world went silent during COVID, I picked up a paintbrush — not to create, but to survive. What began as an act of desperation became the turning point of my life.
Within months, my work caught the attention of people I once believed lived on the other side of an unbridgeable divide — collectors, families, and art dealers across the world.
I wasn’t born into privilege. My story began in chaos — marked by gang ties, violence, addiction, and years spent trying to rewrite the man I had forced myself to become. But I learned quickly that success doesn’t save you; it exposes what you’ve tried hardest to hide.
I’ve made mistakes. Some I regret; others I now recognize as survival. I hurt people. I let addiction speak louder than love. I chased validation as if it could heal the parts of me I refused to face. But through every wound, every reckoning, I made a promise — to become the man I needed but never had.
Redemption has a cost. Mine was solitude.
I disappeared for a year and a half — no galleries, no noise, no masks. I had to return to the beginning, to the reason I ever picked up a brush.
Over the last year, I’ve been working with an organization focused on youth gang intervention and child exploitation. Together, we’ve helped over a thousand young people find a different path — one I never had the chance to see at their age. My life and art have become a window, showing what’s possible when pain turns to purpose.
Art saved my life. And now, it’s how I try to save others.
Because art should be real. Not glamorized, not sanitized for social circles that celebrate the fall but forget the fallen.
Every stroke I paint is a confession.
Every drip, a scar I no longer hide from.
The black carries betrayal and loss.
The yellow — the flicker of light that refuses to go out.
The red — redemption, not violence, but proof that I’m still here.
This body of work was born from silence, prayer, and a kind of honesty that only exists when there’s nothing left to prove. It’s not about the art world anymore — it’s about the human one. It’s about what it means to survive yourself.
I paint to stay alive.
Because through it all, I became the man I needed. And if my work speaks, let it speak to this:
Even in the darkest rooms, cannot escape the light