As a child, I always loved visiting my grandma. Her house was filled with African masks, Vietnamese water puppets, paintings, rugs, and trinkets from over 100 countries. She cooked with exotic spices, and mailed me postcards whenever she was abroad. So the fascination started early. If I was asked today what my favorite interior decorating scheme is, it would still be  “international travel trinkets chic”.

My mother was also well traveled: she was born in Japan and, grew up in Tunisia, on a sailboat, and in about a dozen places in between, due to my grandfather’s military career. Both my mother and grandmother did me the kindness of exposing me to travel while I was young. We went to New York, The Grand Canyon. As I got older we went out of country, visiting Spain, Morocco and Kenya.  They believe that traveling broadens the mind, exposes you to new ideas, and encourages tolerance and understanding. It’s also a lot of fun! I agree with those sentiments, and I am forever thankful to my mom and grandma for teaching me those lessons. 

My early experiences with travel made me gain an appreciation for it- the exotic, the unusual and the novel. More than just an appreciation, a hunger. Tangier was like being in a fantasy novel come to life. Morocco. Morocco, with its spice scented air, the call to prayer echoing among the buildings and along the streets, the busy Souks full of colored cloth and glass lanterns. The American West with its dry deserts, rocky canyons, and long disused mines. Every abandoned mining town and cactus garden was like seeing a spaghetti western in real-time. John Wayne might saunter around the corner any second. The books and movies I consumed were fictional; I’d never get to ride a dragon or duel an outlaw. Naturally, growing up, one thinks that every part of the fiction is unreal, everything is made up. But the joy, the delight, upon realizing that the hobbits trekked across New Zealand on their way to Mordor. That floating mountains in Avatar resided in China (firmly planted on the ground but no less ethereal) Magic was real.

Along with falling in love with travel, I had a natural affinity for the arts: drawing, painting, and music. As I grew up, I pursued those hobbies almost to the exclusion of all else. Where travel brought me excitement, creating gave me peace. As a young adult, being in school, I did not have the means to travel, so I focused on the other parts of my life that brought me joy. I was able to translate my hobbies into a degree, and received both a Bachelors and a Master in Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Once I graduated, I immediately moved across the U.S. to San Francisco, where I now reside. I worked as an architect for four years, vacationing to international destinations whenever I can.

Now that I am free to use my time and money as I please, I utilize my artistic skills and architectural knowledge to catalog my travels. This blog is meant both to entertain and to share information. By rendering my travels through artistic mediums instead of just photos, I hope to impart all the joy, wonder, and beauty that I experienced on my journeys. I want to capture places, people and feelings. I hope that you draw inspiration from my work, seek your own joy, and discover new things. Beauty awaits! 

-An Artist Abroad