Mixed Media 26.5 x 24

In Toucan Paradise, I explore the emotional architecture of tropical memory—an inner landscape shaped as much by grief and resilience as by color and life. Set within an imagined jungle where every leaf listens and every drop of rain remembers, two toucans stand quietly amid the lush cacophony of flora and form. They are not simply birds; they are witnesses—keepers of stories, migration, and metamorphosis.

The repeated raindrop motif flows across the canvas like cellular memory or silent tears—suggesting that nature, like the body, holds emotion at a microscopic level. Each drop is an echo. Each pattern, a pulse. The abstracted foliage, drawn from the biodiversity of my Latin American roots, becomes both shelter and labyrinth—inviting the viewer into a space where growth and mourning coexist.

My use of dotted textures and textile-like forms draws from indigenous visual traditions while also referencing microscopic structures—where my identities as artist and scientist converge. In this synthesis, the natural world becomes a metaphor for healing: abundant, layered, and unapologetically alive.

This work is not only a visual celebration of life in the tropics—it is a meditation on survival, femininity, and the quiet strength that exists in stillness, in watching, and in remembering.