I started to draw long before I started to speak. Expressing myself through the visual arts proved so satisfactory that I was temporarily considered mute. I trained academically since the age of 9 at the National Academy of Design in New York. I continued my training at LaGuardia High School for Visual and Performing Arts (the “Fame” school), specializing in sculpture. My training in traditional animation at the School of Visual Arts enhanced my academic training with a knowledge of film, character, set and prop design, and a completely renewed understanding of movement and gesture.

As an artist I glean a great deal of inspiration from my travels and the places and people I encounter all over the world. Museums are my favorite places to visit wherever I go. Stylistically, I feel the closest affinity with German Expressionism, Art Nouveau and Japanese woodblock prints. Among Indigenous art, I am particularly intrigued by the Ainu and Vainakh peoples, who are both part of my family’s heritage. One of my missions as an artist is to share and reinterpret the art and symbolism of these often-overlooked and marginalized cultures.

View my Portfolio

At the moment I am working on Young Adult historical illustrated novels and graphic novel projects, stories with elements of magical realism, and a WWI narrative for adults. My graphic novel projects, currently in varying stages of development, include the following concepts:

Napoleon’s Starship

Gavroche travels to space with one goal – to kill Napoleon before he can expand his empire into the stars. A hidden civilization and a shape-shifting monster turn her war-hardened heart from destruction to a battle to save love and beauty on a perishing planet.

Forthcoming with Wayward Raven Media in Spring 2023!

Phantoms of Vendôme

A disfigured American fighter pilot in 1920s Paris stages a surreal theatrical operation to punish the traitors who destroyed his face and identity, and at the same time expose their conspiracy to steal French national treasures and sell them for weapons to start a new world war.

The Great Museum Robbery – NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM meets BRAVEHEART – a courageous chess pawn from the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh fights an epic duel with an art burglar.

Fairytale retellings drawn from little-known Vainakh and Ainu sources, illustrated by reinterpretations of traditional art and design