This mixed media artwork is made from dried acrylic paint scraped off my palette, saved for over a decade, and cast in epoxy resin.

I started peeling the paint off of my palette twelve years ago because it reminded me of a friend that passed away unexpectedly in 2007. It was something she did when we were teenagers & gossiped in my studio. I thought about her often when I painted and found calming satisfaction in the monotony of scraping the paint. Cleaning my palette at the start of each day unconsciously became part of my studio routine. It still is today.

Sometimes these pieces of dried paint were beautiful and indeed, too pretty to throw away. I started saving them in clear boxes. After a year, I saw miniature versions of my paintings reduced to layered scraps of paint: 365 days of work, emotion, happiness, sadness and everything in between neatly condensed into a box.

It took me over a decade to figure out how to utilize these tiny remnants of paintings past. After sorting the pieces by color, I carefully arranged them, taking into account all sides including the back. I wanted each side to provide a different but beautiful view. I see them as painting-sculpture hybrids or three-dimensional paintings that can be displayed hanging on a wall as a painting or freestanding on a shelf similar to a sculpture.

The concept of this series is about memory and time. As it has expanded, I have incorporated larger formats and maps from my personal collection of places I have lived or visited. Maps tell us where we are going, where we have gone, or where we can go; they are the past, present and future on paper. When cast in resin, the map is still recognizable (even though certain areas are not visible), and everything becomes compressed: our nostalgia, emotions and memories are neatly reduced to a few square inches.