My favorite piece of mine is a digital drawing I did of a boy with a moth. He’s standing on a ledge at night by the sea with fireflies flying around. I have other pieces with deeper meanings, but honestly, this is my favorite because I didn’t have to put much thought into it, I could just draw whatever felt good to me and enjoy the visuals. The piece rendered in a different style than what I usually use, and it was an incredibly fun process to make it. It took a bit of experimenting to figure out how I wanted to go about drawing it, but I love the piece because I put a lot of love into the colors and scenery, every stylistic choice had a piece of me in it.

I want to connect with people. I want stories like mine told on TV without being filtered or censored. I want people to know that no matter where they come from, they are beautiful and important. Through my art, I hope to strike someone in the heart, I want to make a connection and show someone that their life has value, and that only by being yourself, can you truly flourish. I want to help people persevere through their struggles, I want to encourage people to keep fighting despite whatever they’re going through. I want something I make to be the light at the end of someone’s tunnel. I am the child of a Hispanic household. My parents are Cuban and immigrated alone to the US, like many others, hoping to give their children a world of opportunity. I am eternally grateful for what they've granted me, but this has also caused a disconnect between us, two countries clashing. I am my mother’s child, but not the one she thought she’d raise. I go to a great school, I get the best grades I can, and I push myself hard- all things she envisioned for me, but I am also queer, a huge cat fan (despite being allergic), and an artist…the furthest thing from the ideal doctor most immigrants dream of. I want to show people that even if they don’t fit into the mold people have carved out for them, that doesn’t mean that they’re broken —— because they were never meant to be trapped in a box anyways. Time and time again I have seen people like myself censored, stereotyped, and written as the butt of the joke in movies and shows— the Hispanic maid who can’t do anything right, Hispanic men are reduced to only blue-collar work, and Latina women are incessantly sexualized. Even in my favorite childhood movie, Chihuahua Beverly Hills, these stereotypes run rampant. The main Hispanic character in the movie is a gardener who works for a rich woman whose dog goes on to get stolen and trafficked in Mexico. Alongside that, Queer stories are constantly being censored— this year, Disney released Win or Lose, a show which originally was written to have a storyline about a transgender character, but it was scrapped because it was deemed inappropriate. I want to help create art that represents EVERYONE.

This piece is about the fear of growing old. It depicts me on my eighteenth birthday blowing out my candles. I chose to use contrasting cold and warm tones to depict different moods and use symbolic imagery to convey my message. The most obvious being the skeleton clutching me. It represents the dread I felt in that moment and how vivid my fear was. On the right, I chose to paint white chrysanthemums which are said to represent grief and passing, showing the melancholic feeling you get on birthdays when you realize that you’ve ended yet another chapter of your life. On the chrysanthemum’s side is an hourglass filled with confetti, full on the bottom to show that it has run out of time. I chose confetti because its colorful festive image juxtaposed the commonly used grim object and showcases the complex feelings that clash within me on my birthdays. There’s a clear expectation that you should feel happy on your birthdays, it’s a celebration, but it often just feels bittersweet. The last imagery included on the right side of the painting is a window with winter scenery. The outside is cold and sterile. Everything is dead. At the same time, although winter often depicts a time of struggle, it also hold a spring soon coming. With the imagery, I hoped to introduce the idea that a,though this transition is very harsh and lonely, there is hope for a brighter future with time and growth. On the left of the painting, the image is warped into a birthday from long ago. A hello kitty cake with confetti tablecloth from when i was a child adorns the table. The birthday depicted was my first birthday after my parents divorced and we moved away from my childhood home. That birthday too, was a major moment in my life where my environment and self was changing in ways I couldn’t really understand. I wanted to highlight the innocence of that age with the colorful imagery and characters I used to like. On this side, I placed bright balloons to deepen the contrast between sides and I included my childhood dog, Canela, in a chair. She was a chihuahua, and she’s spent every year by my side since the beginning of my memories. I felt her inclusion relevant because chihuahuas were said to see the dead in Aztec Culture, and I wanted to depict her as a warrior warning me of what’s to come, and trying to scare off my old age. She passed this month, and in a way, I feel that her passing was my final goodbye to this chapter of my life. Although I miss her and fear the coming years, I’ve had to keep moving on for the sake of my future, and I feel that this has forced me to grow up in a way. As much as I’ve wanted to stop everything and cry and scream over losing her, that’s just not how life works, nor how adulthood does. Through this piece, I wanted to explore my personal feelings on growing up. This piece is part of an AP portfolio I’m working on surrounding the central theme of nostalgia and childhood. I have personally changed in many, many ways throughout the last few years, so I wanted to revisit everything that used to feel familiar to me as many things in my life have been fleeting.