Naturescape - Triptych

This triptych explores how listening to music can alter perception, memory, and create space for reflection and stillness. Across the three works, sound is an invisible structure that shapes how we experience environment, emotion, and thought.

Each piece represents a distinct psychological state of listening. Fishing for My Thoughts centers on a solitary figure beside water and an empty chair, emphasizing stillness and introspection. Brown Sand shifts into abstraction, using soft forms that echo natural waves and rhythm. Jeep Mountain depicts two figures moving through a mountainous landscape, suggesting shared experience, motion, and exploration. Personally I imagine Naomi Sharon, Snoh Aalegra or Frank Ocean playing in these “Naturescapes”.

Rather than illustrating music directly, the series focuses on its effects, how it can shift mood, trigger memory, or slow reality. Natural landscapes and organic forms represent sonic experience, with repetition in the terrain suggesting cadence.

Negative space is used throughout to create pause and clarity, allowing each composition to breathe and guiding attention toward form, figure, and atmosphere. Together, the works move between solitude, abstraction, and connection, inviting a quiet, personal response to the experience of listening.

Love Series

Inspired by the sublime and creating environments that reflect emotional states. Huney explores emotions such as longing, fear, warmth and belonging through her subjects, reflecting their innermost desires through colour blocking and calculated linework. This series centers around the idea of belonging, whether it’s the relationship with oneself, nature, platonic partners or with time

(Illustrations for The Love Series, Huney, Digital Drawings, 2025)

505

Inspired by lovers, 505 reflects a relationship from its budding to blossoming stage. This painting is inspired by boundless love, one that goes beyond mere admiration. A love that never stops growing.

The background text is an excerpt from a poem written by the lover, and its also found circling around the pair. The subjects are intentionally drawn genderless and fluid, serving as a canvas for the audience to freely picture their own realities on it.

The warm, earth-like tones represent feeling grounded. The two characters are always attentive to each other, mirroring themselves unintentionally. This love exists beyond ownership and ego; Its a giving type of love, one that inspires and fights.

(505, Huney, Acrylic Paint, 24 x 36, 2021)

Home Base

This piece feels like it came from the pages of my mind, filled with emotions and trains of thought. The concept for this commission was to illustrate how self doubt manifests into daily life, and more importantly the strength it takes to overcome it.

The house and the “this feels familiar” text represent how challenging it can be to fight self destructive behaviours when it feels like routine. The house is an embodiment of negative but familiar feelings, and while its inviting it is not sustainable to live there.

These patterns are easy to fall into, especially if its a path you’ve taken before. Familiarity is comfortable but there is no growth in it.

There is a solution here too, the way out of this cycle is pictured on the roof of the house. The roof is detached, showing how the same walls that were once built to contain you can be taken apart as well. Nothing is set in stone forever.

All around the canvas, the multiple pathways reveal themselves the more you look for them. Its hard to form healthy habits but its possible. The subject on the top left corner is seeking a new path, looking past the calls and cries of habit and the past. Building a new home for yourself is daunting, but with patience and embracing imperfections as growth you’re halfway there already.

(Home Base, Huney, Mixed Media, 24 x 36, 2021)

Blushing

This painting is inspired around the act of adoration and playful energy. Theres something to be said about how oil pastel looks against the warm beige wash. I was nervous about using fuchsia, orange and red together because I thought they would make the painting too warm and intense, but the blue pastel and white paint balanced it all.

(Blushing, Huney, Acrylic and Oil Pastel, 18 x 24, 2020)

Carnal Pleasures

I find myself questioning what makes us human, wondering what drives us collectively.

This painting is a visual monologue exploring pleasure and apathy. I used red to symbolize emotions stemming from passion; anger, desire and love. Meanwhile the black and white embroidery weaves in and out of the pools of red. Using thread on top of paint allows me to make tangible connections between different parts of the canvas, in ways paint can’t.

I don’t have the answer to what makes us who we are, but I’m exploring.

(Carnal Pleasures, Huney, Mixed Media, 16 x 20, 2020)

Motions

I feel like some of the best art is unplanned. Its often created as a side project and ends up reflecting who you are better than anything else.

Don’t get me wrong, my intricate artworks that required a series of planning and replanning are close to my heart too, but theres something about unplanned masterpieces that elicit a raw form of emotion. It’s unfiltered and imperfect.

In the process of creating a commissioned painting, I had extra yellow, blue and grey paint left over. I mixed them together with white gesso and sporadically created the wavy pattern in the background. It created texture whilst leaving the human mark of showing the depth of the strokes and paint instead of a two-dimensional seamless surface.

As I continued the commissioned artwork and had left over colours, I worked on Motions on the side. As I drew the face outlines with the pale yellow before planning its “filling” beforehand I grew to enjoy the thrill of spontaneity in my process. As it came together colour by colour, I really felt like it reflected my identity and thought processes more directly than the other piece. It’s called Motions to reflect the momentum of creativity, nostalgia, waves of loneliness and then some. This one’s an extension of me.

(Motions, Huney, Acrylic and Oil Pastel, 18 x 24, , 2020)

Past, Present and Future

I often think about how my sense of self evolves and changes over time. This piece dissects one’s growth from a third person perspective, allowing for a more objective take on the path.

Specifically, I wanted to explore the idea of how my self-doubt has evolved over the years and how I predict its course in the future. Starting from the right hand side, I have the “past” version of myself, making mistakes and learning through them (sometimes enjoying them, thus the devil’s horn). The past figure mourns her naivety but understands that she must grow out of it to move forward.

Then there is the “present” self, the most detailed figure as I exist in the current moment. This figure peers forward with hopes and dreams, with commitment to better itself through projections of its future self (the dashed line). Her mind is a maze and she is made up of different patches from past selves, choosing to keep the best parts.

Lastly, the “future” self is enlightened and her capacity to become a better woman and artist have grown. Her eyes point forward and while she acknowledges her past identities, she is determined to outgrow her shell.

Although I break down the meaning behind a lot of the symbols in my work, its important to know that there is no singular meaning. I like the idea that art is subjective and there are endless interpretations to works. That being said, there are really no wrong answers to what an art piece means to you. I’ve left some hidden messages within mine too.

(Past, Present and Future, Huney, Mixed Media on a 20 x 24 canvas, 2020)

Mother + Daughter

My relationship with my mom feels alien sometimes, since we come from different worlds. As a second gen immigrant, my culture is a hybrid between my parents’s native one and my Western environment.

This diptych represents my mom and I relearning our relationship, and defining what ours looks like. Maybe some of you have always been close with your mothers, but for me the stitches on the canvas symbolize us coming together after feeling alienated from our differences.

The design on two pieces is the same, and so is the colour palette. However the stitching and colour placement vary. One face is my mom and one is a self-portrait in relation to the bond. One tear is made up of blood and sacrifice for survival and the other is a different kind of pain, one that yearns to live and to be understood.

I think there will always be distance between us, some things that we cannot fully comprehend nor communicate to each other. I’m learning that thats okay. For now, I’m happy to have made progress and I hope to stitch up more areas.

(Mother + Daughter, Huney, Mixed Media on a 20 x 24 canvas, 2020)

Influx

This painting depicts the motions of immense creativity and none at all during quarantine. I go through periods that feel like mania where my mind spews out ideas that feel like white noise, forcing me to create them. In turn, I also go through periods where I feel like I have no ideas and my creative voice is on mute.

I never know how long each of these ruts will last. Although the mania-like phase seems to be positive and art-filled, its scary when my inner voice can’t take a breath. The ideas become all consuming of my thoughts and I feel physically charged, unable to sleep sometimes.

This piece was created during the frenzy phase, I started 5 paintings within 2 weeks… after not having made any canvas pieces in months. After working on some commissions, I used the left over colours to add to this canvas. It was such a fun and cathartic experience because I used really vibrant colours compared to my usual rather neutral palette. The lines and shapes felt organic, not much planning was done as I placed my paintbrush on the cotton.

Each brush stroke felt like I was putting this incessant voice to rest. For now, anyways. Enjoy the fruits of my labour, essentially an extension of me.

(Influx, Huney, Acrylic and Oil Pastel, 18 x 24, 2020)

Purgatory

pur·ga·to·ry

/ˈpərɡəˌtôrē/

noun

  1. (in Roman Catholic doctrine) a place or state of suffering inhabited by the souls of sinners who are expiating their sins before going to heaven.

This painting is inspired by the binaries of life and death, heaven and hell, soul and mind and flesh and bone. I interpreted "purgatory” as the place my character contemplates the morality of his sins. Thus the halo above his head while his alter ego in yellow has a devil’s horn.

Details wise, the background text is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1609) revolving around the theme of daring damnation. I chose cursive to make the text look like a handwritten letter, a note from the character to himself and to the worlds beyond him.

The yellow arrow slicing across the body represents the splitting between life and death and heaven and hell. It kills the character while simultaneously giving him a life after death. The dotted lines represent many things like the twisted paths available for one to take, or a straight edged one that leads to the abyss. Lastly, the teardrops on the left hand side symbolize the number of lives available to the character, like a video game. There is also the letter “P” in blue paint to emphasize the theme of purgatory.

I try to explain my inspirations and my thought processes in these written statements, but they only serve one perspective. My artworks are open-ended, new meanings can be created with each set of fresh eyes.

(Purgatory, Huney, Mixed Media on a 18 x 24 canvas, 2020)

Slow Dancing With The Devil

The commission request to create a Basquiat inspired diptych featuring J Cole lyrics. I wanted to honour Basquiat and show I was inspired by his abstract, multi-dimensional work instead of trying to copy it. His influence can be seen through the attention on dissecting human anatomy, using solid colour in some shapes while outlining others, dotted lines, texture and most importantly - layers.

There are so many layers to this (haha) and it took a couple of weeks to get it right, each layer teaching me something new. For example, the brown background is actually comprised of 5 different brown layers (visible if you look closely at the edges and corners of the canvases). To tie in my own interpretation, I used pastel colours, my stylized faces (see cheekbones) and the famous “tear”.

The most gratifying part about creating this diptych was building personality on each layer and researching Basquiat’s work. Also, my favourite aspect of the paintings are how they complete each other when placed side by side while they can also stand powerfully on their own.

If you look closely, there are tiny stick-men drawn in orange crayon climbing all around the paintings (how many can you count?). If you continue analyzing, you’ll see that there are partially hidden words in the background… they’re lyrics from J Cole’s song “Miss America”. The client’s request was to include two passages (in white) from Cole’s song about not falling victim to capitalism and the culture of materialism. However I wanted the artwork to carry the message further than the two obvious passages and chose to incorporate them in the back, partially concealed (like some truths). I hope Basquiat would be proud of these multi-dimensional layers! I sure am!

(Slow Dancing With The Devil, Honey, Mixed Media on two 30 x 40 canvases, 2020).