If you’ve spent any time with my work, you’ve probably noticed they keep showing up: cats, clocks, and balloons. Sometimes they’re obvious. Sometimes they’re half-hidden, watching from the edges or floating just out of reach. People ask me all the time if they “mean something.”
They do—but not always in the way symbols usually behave.
Cats are often linked with or symbolize cycles of death and renewal. This is thanks to myths about “nine lives” and their calm relationship with stillness. They are also linked with moving between worlds. But more than this, my cats are witnesses. They’re independent, observant, and quietly defiant. Cats don’t act for you; they exist alongside you. In my work, they represent intuition, curiosity, and the parts of ourselves that refuse to be controlled or fully explained. They move freely through strange spaces, unbothered by warped architecture or impossible logic, because they belong there. In many ways, they’re stand-ins for the viewer—here, alert, and slightly suspicious of what’s unfolding.
The clocks are about time, but not productivity time or calendar time. They’re about felt time. Memory time. The way moments stretch, loop, collapse, or refuse to stay where we put them. The clocks in my work sometimes crack, melt, or hover. They even break apart. That’s how time actually behaves when emotion is involved. Trauma, nostalgia, ritual, creativity—none of them obey a straight timeline. The clocks are reminders that the past is never really gone, and the future is never fully stable. And that our time here, our very lives, are very short in the grand scheme of things. Our lives are precious fleeting gifts.
And the balloons—they’re the most deceptive of the three. They look playful, light, almost innocent. But balloons are about tension. They float because something is pulling against gravity. They’re always one moment away from drifting off or bursting. In my work, balloons represent hope, fragility, and the strange optimism we carry even in dark or absurd situations. They are my prayers. They are joy with a threat attached. Celebration with a countdown.
Together, these elements form a personal visual language. I’m not asking viewers to decode them into a single answer. I’m asking them to feel them and define them for themselves. To recognize something familiar but slightly off—like a dream you’re sure you’ve had before, but can’t quite place.
They keep appearing because they belong to the world within my mind. They also keep appearing in my own surrealistic thinking. A world where logic bends, time misbehaves, the silent observers of my meta-mind lurk quietly, and beauty exists alongside unease. Once you step into that space, those symbols will never leave you alone anymore. And honestly?
I don’t want them to.
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