Critical & Creative Thinking Statement

Critical thinking is at the heart of everything I create; creative thinking breathes it into life. Across my portfolio, analysis and imagination come together, threads woven through work that often tangles with emotion, philosophy, and the strange ways culture molds experience. In this statement, I reference two artifacts: "Walking With Death – A Journey Through Grief and Remembrance," a personal-cultural essay, and "Cosmic Paradise," a digital artwork. Both pieces, in their different textures, exhibit how deeply I question assumptions and build something resonant from the raw materials left behind.

"Walking With Death" dismantles Western culture’s stilted approach to grief, treating it as a problem to be solved rather than a relationship to be honored. Here, critical thinking isn’t just present; it’s woven through every paragraph. I question why mourning is considered pathological when prolonged, why death must be whispered about instead of embraced, and why dignified end-of-life choices remain so rare. I blend academic theory, personal memory, and cultural analysis into a single, flowing current. One that drags the reader far from tidy conclusions. Yet, it's not all logic and critique; creativity pours through the emotional scaffolding. I turn abstract arguments into vivid, lived experience, mapping the terrain of loss in a way that refuses to sanitize or flatten the jaggedness of real grief.

Meanwhile, "Cosmic Paradise" breaks ground on another frontier altogether: a surreal winter landscape where two colossal planets rise over snow-blanketed pines. It is not realism. It is not fantasy. It’s something composed together from wonder itself. The piece flexes creative thinking through visual risk-taking. Mixing recognizable Earthly forms with celestial impossibilities, to build an environment that dares viewers to imagine life beyond the thin membrane of what we call ordinary. The use of deep purples and luminous cold blues was anything but accidental; they were pulled together to evoke awe, mystery, and a hush that feels both infinite and intimate.

Together, these works don’t just "show" critical and creative thinking in action; they insist upon it. Every choice, every structure, every leap from personal pain to cultural theory to cosmic wonder is part of the same ongoing project. To refuse passive acceptance, to ask harder questions, and to build experiences, whether textual or visual, that linger like an echo long after the first encounter has ended. These skills are not confined to isolated moments of insight or artistic expression; they are portable, transferable, and essential. Whether developing new ideas, collaborating in professional settings, or responding to challenges that don’t yet exist, the habits of mind I’ve cultivated, questioning deeply, imagining boldly, and expressing precisely, will remain central. Critical and creative thinking aren’t just tools for making art or writing essays; they are ways of engaging with the world. Ways of paying attention. Ways of refusing to look away.