As I move through my mid-to-late twenties, I have been forced to confront how much of my life has felt suspended. For years, I felt as though I was living the same day over and over again. Then, almost without realizing it, five years had passed.

Looking back, I began to recognize how little space I had given myself to grow. While the people around me seemed to be moving forward, I felt stagnant, watching life happen around me without knowing how to participate in it. Anxiety, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome made it difficult to imagine myself outside of the limitations I had created.

These paintings come from the moment when I began to recognize those limitations. I became aware of the boxes I had built around myself, the expectations, fears, responsibilities, and beliefs that had slowly determined how I was allowed to exist.

The boxes are both physical and psychological. They represent the boundaries I created to protect myself, but also the boundaries that eventually prevented me from moving forward. For a long time, staying inside of them felt safer than taking the risk of changing.

These works exist in the space between realization and action. They are not necessarily about having already escaped those boxes, but about finally seeing them. There is something unsettling about realizing that you have been standing in the same place while time continues to move around you.

For me, these paintings mark that realization. They are a confrontation with lost time, stagnation, fear, and the pressure of feeling as though I should be further along. But they are also the beginning of something else: the possibility of movement.

I cannot get those five years back, but I can acknowledge where I have been and begin asking myself where I want to go next.