In June 2024, my artwork inspired by the Broadway production Water for Elephants was selected for the HUG x Tony Awards Fan Art Open Call.

This remains one of my favourite open calls — not because of its place in the contemporary art world, but because of the genuine excitement I felt making the work.

Theatre creates a particular kind of visual memory. A story exists on stage through movement, light, music, costume and performance, and then continues to live differently in the imagination of each person who has experienced it.

Water for Elephants stayed with me because of this combination of spectacle and vulnerability — a world that appears dazzling from the outside while its characters are navigating uncertainty, loss, love and the need to begin again.

Creating the artwork was my way of responding to that experience rather than illustrating it.

And perhaps that is why I still remember this project so warmly.

Not every meaningful moment in an artist’s practice has to be important on paper.

Sometimes making something simply because it moved you is reason enough.