The After is a body of work that began after the death of my father. The series is not about describing that loss directly, but about what comes after it—the space it creates, and the way it changes how I see the world and the people around me.
The works are made on wood board, where I work with rough surfaces and harsh, scribbled marks. The process is physical and immediate. The marks carry frustration, release, and memory, but they are also part of a process of letting things move through me rather than holding them in place.
Since my father’s death, I have found myself becoming more aware of the weight that people carry quietly in their lives. The work reflects this shift. While the gestures in the paintings can appear aggressive or raw, they come from a place that is slowly softening—an awareness that loss connects us more than it separates us.
The After is not about a single moment of grief. It is about the ongoing state that follows it: learning to live with absence, and discovering a deeper empathy for others who are carrying their own.
This journey also reunited me with my fourteen siblings, leading me to Italy to meet three of them, some for the first time in over twenty years. In many ways, this was what my father had always wished for, not just for us to remember him, but for us to find each other again.
