biography

I was born in Kop Nymit, Bateay Meanchey province, west of Cambodia, bordering Thailand in 1970 and came to the United States as a refugee in 1981. I received my Bachelor degree in 1993 from New College of California. I majored in International Service and Development. I had never studied painting. I began painting in year 2000 as a way of exorcising life's unbearable memory of war, experience of human miseries and sense of despair. I have a master's degree in Community Social Psychology, in which I use art to work with people who have been traumatized by war, social inequity and injustices. I have been in Cambodia off and on doing various work with NGOs as paid and volunteer staff. I love Cambodia, but I don't feel completely comfortable in it because I see these people repeating pre-Khmer Rouge behaviors, and they scare me. I want to go away, but this is the only country I have that I feel less invisible in. My work often describes this uncertainty in my life, I am always floating somewhere, running away from something, going places, always traveling, seeking adventure, looking for people to love and be with, searching for my everlasting purpose in the world.