About Filipina

My Filipino parents both immigrated to the U.S. just after the 1965 Immigration Act passed. They met in the elevator of their D.C. apartment building; she lived with her roommates on one floor and he lived with his roommates on another. They got married and found a house in the Maryland suburbs to raise me and my younger brother. It was still all farm land back then, and I remember walking beside my dad with a wheelbarrow to pick up cow dung from the farmer down the street.

 

Since both of my parents worked, there was no one to take me to sports practices or afterschool clubs, so I learned to unlock the door for me and my brother after we got off the bus. We weren't allowed to leave the house and play with the neighborhood kids while my parents weren't home. Most of my free time I inside spent watching cartoons tv, reading science fiction and fantasy novels, and drawing and coloring with my trusty Crayola crayons.

 

When I was 12, my mom petitioned for each of her 6 siblings and their families to come the United States, so our house eventually became the unofficial landing zone for the new arrivals. I remember most of middle school and high school days spending time with my aunts and uncles and 13 cousins for holidays and long summers. 

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When I got to college, choosing an art degree in college seemed like a foolish and unwise choice to my practical immigrant parents. I was fortunate to graduate when the internet was still new so I easily found jobs designing marketing materials and updating company websites.

 

I moved to Los Angeles where I met my future husband and after we got married, we moved to Kansas to start up our tech company and start our family. After running the servers out of our living for a few years, we obtained funding from private investors and moved to Colorado to grow our mom-and-pop small business to 60 employees and 400 customers. When we got the second round of funding and sold our shares, our relationship to the company quickly changed for the worse and we both left the company we had built from scratch.

 

Leaving the startup merry-go-round allowed me to​ return to my creative interests. I slowly learned to let go of my limiting beliefs about what makes good art and to trust my own creative choices. My blog is where I share my evolving ideas about how to be an artist and what has helped me to develop my creativity.

 

My current work is a series of paintings inspired by my frequent walks in my neighborhood. I bring a small sketchbook with me to capture our life in the suburbs: our tennis court, our golf course, our backyard gardens. Working in a sketchbook gives me permission to experiment with layering different marks, combining textures and colors using watercolor, ink, pencils, and of course, crayons. My intention is to capture my response to these places and explore my connection to this complex community.

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