My Story:

Hi, I’m Kai!

I continue experiencing the connection between my art and myself. Simultaneously, art helps me express existing feelings while revealing feelings I didn’t even realize were present. Imbedded in every stroke, color and energy combine and merge into each piece of art I share with you here.

Each piece I’ve created is a sentence in the story of who I am and what I’ve lived through. Being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease within a year of being born, it seems as though I was never meant to have an “easy” life. For years I struggled inside a body that felt like it was constantly finding new ways to attack itself. Every several years I was being diagnosed with yet another autoimmune disease.

This pattern persists to this day, and is the story of so many others who have autoimmune disorders. In my thirties I finally realized that my body and I are on the same team. Painting became an outlet at this time as I dove into exploring the artist within me. I used painting to convey what I was feeling, or what I wanted to be feeling.

At the time it felt like no one was listening to me let alone hearing what I was trying to say. I went mute. For three years, I didn’t speak. What was the point? My health continued to decline, multiple doctors weren’t able to wrap their minds around all that I was dealing with on a daily basis, and the people around me continued to tell me to “get better soon”.

Trying to communicate via writing received so much pushback, as if I were purposely inconveniencing everyone around me. Relatives and friends insisted I speak to them, one even demanded that they “needed words’. Isn’t writing made up of words? It felt baffling experiencing the reactions to my silence, as if I chose it. When I would try to speak, my body would revolt, anxiety would build, and any background or dormant symptoms suddenly flared. I would pay for each attempt at speech for days or weeks, my body crashing into a deep fatigue that I compare to the feeling of summiting a mountain with too little food and oxygen.

During this time I leaned into my paintings, drawings, and photography. I could swipe some colors onto a page or click my camera and create a piece of beauty in what felt like a hostile world. Each creation became a lifeline to a different life. I adopted the motto of “little by little”. I began to witness how each step, no matter how microscopic it felt, added up into a better day, a different perspective, a more joyful life.

As you’ll see here, I’ve collected a decade’s worth of little moments to share with you and help inspire you to reach for your dream life. Between the days when I painted a massive five foot by five foot canvas and the days when I was bed bound, I created this collection. The collection as a whole is the sum of years of working with my body. Each individual painting or photograph captures a snippet in time.

I discovered a way to share prints with you that allows my body to move at the pace it needs to for each day. Since my body requires different paces on different days, I had to find a way to piece together multiple ways to speak without using words. Every medium I explored over the years became a new expression of my true voice. What began as a childhood fascination with a 1980’s Polaroid camera morphed and grew into a lifetime of watercolors, acrylics, pastels, and large-scale abstract paintings. Each option allowed a different part of me to take center stage, giving me the space to finally break my silence and reclaim my narrative.