As I refine my artistic skill, I hope to be able to express the complexities of emotion through my visual storytelling. This concept is very important to me—I think that the world is struggling to come to terms with their fears and anxieties a lot more lately, and by expressing both disturbing and empathetic themes through my stories, I want to encourage people to look inward and ask themselves *why* they have the reactions they do to certain concepts. I think art can always have a positive impact on someone, even if the majority of their stance on a specific media is negative. Horror grants the viewer a chance to discover what they fear and why they fear it, and expression of layered troubles in a story is like an exercise for taking in the whole picture of different situations. These are the things that I want to emphasize the most in the projects I write and draw, to give my audience a snapshot of a different perspective and help them understand the people around them as well as themselves.

Growing up, my family has listened to a lot of the band Tool. The lead singer, Maynard James Keenan, witnessed his mother having a stroke and becoming permanently paralyzed at eleven years old. Throughout the discographies of both Tool and other bands he's in, he uses music as a medium to tell complex parts of the story through multiple songs— including the process of confronting his trauma with the event, the pain and dilemmas his mother had to go through, the frustration he had with her claims that it's a part of God's plan, and two final songs with a total length of 11 minutes about the process of her post-life ascent. The story of his experiences with his mother changed my perception of how events like these can be worked through with an artistic medium, which is greatly important to my goals as an artist. His lyrics aren't just about the fact that these situations are complicated, they embody the emotions of the situation themselves through characterization and empathy. Listening to these songs for such a long time was crucial for both my storytelling development, and my relationship with my own emotions. It's never as simple as "this made someone feel sad" or "this was a painful experience"; there are always layers and layers of experiences, assumptions, and complications behind every feeling, positive or negative. I think a big problem today is that people (especially kids) are less inclined to pick up the artistic exploration that they can use to cope with the world—and when they are, a considerable amount still tend to not realize the potential for healing and self-reflection that it can have. It's a deeply valuable tool (pun not intended) that allows a better understanding of yourself, which in turn leads to better interpersonal relationships and outlook on how people interact with you. It's possible that this uncertainty starts with the environment people grow up in lacking emphasis on self-knowledge and how to hold hobbies for your own mental health. There are art and music programs at most schools, sure, but I've never heard of a public school providing enough assistance with how creation can help you personally. Even counselors are known to be sub-par. If I had the resources to improve anything about my community's environment for children and teens, I would start at ensuring more diverse and specific options are available for the arts through local programs. A lot of uneasiness about art comes from not understanding the appeals of certain kinds of it—so, by ensuring that the options are broad, it'll likely be easier for people to enjoy it. I wouldn't want school art and band programs to be educated in art's affect on psychology. Kids and teens tend to sense when their teachers are being told to preach about how people can be kind and empathetic. Instead, I think ensuring that they're actually paid well enough to be comfortable would be great encouragement to spend more energy on connecting with their students and guiding them through the affects that art can have on them.