Artist Statement

Repeats, But Never the Same

I was twelve when my biology teacher handed us cotton swabs and told us to scrape the inside of our cheeks.

Under the microscope: cells—clear, jelly-like, ghostly. They were me. I was them.

I remember thinking: is this really all I’m made of?

Years later, I painted this—not to make something beautiful, but because I was remembering.

The red spiral came first. Not quite a double helix. More like memory: coiled, unsteady, alive.

Then came fragments. Then orbiting suns. It started to look like something breathing.

I once read that if you step far enough back—beyond the solar system—planets don’t simply orbit.

They spiral, forward through space. The whole system is a helix. Like DNA.

That can't just be coincidence. Maybe it’s design. Maybe it’s echo. Maybe it’s a joke.

In repetition, there is something sacred. The spiral returns, but never as itself.

Some say this looks like space. Others say bacteria. Or music.

I say: yes.

Maybe the point is this: we’re always built from something small, from sacred, looping structures.

Cells. Suns. Memories. Mistakes.

I’m not sure if this is science, or prayer.

Maybe they’ve always been the same thing.