It was March 2020 and I had arrived at my new home literally at the start of the pandemic. The whole country became a dead city and everything seemed to shut down. The moving boxes that I had sent from my old home were being constantly delayed. And how long would I have to wait to get my green card and social security number? I felt like a person without a country - not from my hometown and not American yet - a person on the border. Without a real home, I felt like someone who doesn't belong anywhere or someone incomplete.

That was the feeling when I was painting this work. - A Stranger.
I started painting to record an archive of my heart - to complete my soul. When I started this piece, I felt a strange loneliness, but little by little, my thoughts about home began to change. I enjoyed the warm afternoon sunlight and fell in love with the incredible sunsets. Little acts of kindness that I would have overlooked before, now meant everything to me. Slowly I discovered a new side of this strange and empty feeling. Rather than feeling like a stranger, I began to see this new world with fresh eyes, a feeling filled with anticipation of the unfamiliar. Everything new became precious, and that made me a passionate lover of life. So I decided to always be ‘a stranger.’ So for me, home is not where I was born or raised, but a place where I am heading to and dreaming of. Now my home is LA.