I am 20 years old and was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA.  I've been making art my entire life; however, I have only been seriously painting in oil for three years.  In the past, I always shied away from painting the human figure, especially the face, because I was very preoccupied with my inability to achieve my goal, which was naturalism.  When I was forced to create a self portrait for a class last year, I was surprised with how much I absolutely loved making portraiture, the display of human emotion and psychology, the subject of my work.  After the self portrait, I began to explore what psychological portraiture really was and what it could be. My work is about the figure, their relationship with the space they're in and more importantly, what they are thinking or doing. The viewer is intended to think about the subject's position in the frame as well as their emotional and mental state; their psychology.