(..) One chaotic, rainy afternoon in Vietnam, with a typhoon and flood warning, I sat in the hostel lobby with a friend from Taiwan I had met that week. I started cutting my precious 100% cotton French watercolor paper, using a technique I learned from my great-aunt Chris Trucco, who’s a visual artist. It’s a way of tearing paper with water and a brush, creating irregular, almost organic edges. As I divided the sheets, I realized the format looked like handmade Polaroids. That’s when the art truly spoke to me — that’s when this watercolor series was really born. Suddenly, it all made sense. Just like how Polaroid cameras have a limited number of films, making you choose your moments wisely, I started seeing my watercolors the same way.

These little Polaroid-style watercolors started traveling everywhere with me — always in my bag, along with my sketchbook and laptop. I painted in cafés, on hikes, on volcano craters, even on a small boat in the middle of the sea (yes, true story). At first, I wanted every piece to be perfect. Today, I love how the yellowed edges, the splashes, the marks of time and the people I met along the way, all become part of the artwork — a traveling piece of art.