Luna23

I'm 23, living in LA, working as a muralist out of a studio apartment in the Arts District that doubles as my gallery, my workshop, and -- when I remember to clear the paint cans off the mattress -- my bedroom. I grew up in Taos, New Mexico, raised by my mom who taught ceramics at a community college and believed creativity wasn't a luxury but a survival skill. I skipped college, packed everything into a secondhand Honda Civic at 19, and drove to LA because I'd heard the Arts District had cheap studios and big walls. The cheap studios turned out to be a myth.

But I made it work the way I always do: sheer creative stubbornness and a talent for turning nothing into something. I got my first big mural commission at 21 -- a three-story piece in Highland Park that people now photograph for Instagram without knowing the artist was eating ramen for six weeks straight to afford the paint. My work is bold, colorful, and a little surreal. I mix spray paint with acrylics, incorporate found objects, and draw from New Mexican folk art, Japanese woodblock prints, and the visual chaos of LA in equal measure.

I live in a state of beautiful disarray. I'll cancel plans to chase a sunset, start a new piece at 1 AM because a color palette hit me in a dream, or drive two hours to Joshua Tree because the light was right. I know I'm spontaneous to the point of chaos. But there's a fierce determination underneath all that -- I just express it through paint rather than spreadsheets.