My recent body of work consists of figurative oil paintings, variable in size, that explore how we interact with ourselves and our past, navigating a sense of sentimentality in response to the current state of the world. This series contains paintings that include elements of inversion, meaning that the colors in them are flipped to their opposites to create an uncanny version of the world with which we are familiar. Inversion here serves as a symbol of a deep inner imbalance caused by an amplified Weltschmerz (World-pain)—a German term that describes a feeling of melancholia associated with the weariness of the world and it’s apparent distance from the idyll. With pressing environmental, political, and social issues, as well as incessant contact with media, I believe that such melancholic apathy is a relevant phenomenon in a contemporary cataclysmic world. I am compelled to explore how being exposed to the pain of our world—whether past (e.g. historical atrocities), present (e.g. labor rights), or future (e.g. climate crisis)—can affect individuals and shape our collective state of being and want to evoke benevolence in a contemplative way and artistically speak of community, compassion, and solidarity as ways to navigate and respond to the seemingly tragic state of the world.