Senior Thesis Project (2025- 2026): Amor Fati

Currently on display at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts Gallery until May 28th

For the fiercest, most grounded, unyielding, and loving person I knew—my mom, Veronica Leticia Limon. Thank you for embracing every facet of life and for encouraging me to always “hacerlo a mi manera.”

Amor Fati is an autobiographical exploration of process, loss, memory, and control. Through 150+ works of paint, ink, manipulated objects, and photography, I construct a visual memoir of the past year of my life— marked by play, uncertainty, grief, scouring, and ultimately, acceptance. I move between (and occasionally combine) instinctive, frantic, and unrestricted mark-making and deliberately constructed representation as I grapple with impermanence, hesitation, and fear.

My daily studies and sketchbooks (created quickly using pastels, inks, spray paint, charcoal, acrylics, watercolors, markers and oil sticks) resist perfectionism in favor of immediacy, repetition, and subconscious expression. These works function as a discipline of release: a way to confront indecisiveness, self-criticism, and prioritize action over outcome. Guided by intuition and impulse rather than resolution, they document fleeting impressions of my life (cherished memories, sites, objects, and current hyperfixations) captured through loose references and/or free association.

The memorial flower studies, wooden heart, printed photos, dried flowers, and oil paintings mark a culmination of the experiments: a convergence of carefully constructed imagery (flowers, cherished people, symbols, and personal mantras) with spontaneous, instinct-driven material exploration. Through oil, gouache, watercolor, carved wood, glass, modeling paste, and preserved flowers, these works synthesize control and intuition into expressions of memory and loss.

Across all media, the project embraces experimentation with diverse, unfamiliar materials, discomfort, introspection, repetition, and volume. In a year where I felt I could never fully grasp life’s unpredictable events, the act of making became both meditative and urgent: a balance between sovereignty and surrender, precision and chaos; through which I documented, reassessed, and embraced what lay beyond my control.