Hope Painting

I paint worlds I would like to inhabit. With my recent paintings, I aim to engage viewers emotionally. At a fundamental level, I'm just a person holding a paintbrush, standing in front of a canvas, asking it to show me the way home. Bio: Zylaco grew up near Flint, Michigan. Their parents loved the arts and, at an early age, exposed their kids to visual art through museum visits. Both kids developed an interest in art as a result.Zylaco was a creative child born into a family of seamstresses. Their first creative effort was designing and sewing puppets on a sewing machine. Later, they discovered a knack for realistic drawing and shading in a middle school art class. By high school, Zylaco took up painting in oil and acrylic.After high school, Zylaco joined the Army, serving two terms, where they worked as an air traffic controller (ATC) and, later, an ATC instructor at the US Army Aviation Center. After their Army experience, Zylaco got an ATC job working in the control tower at Columbus Municipai Airport in Columbus, Indiana.More recently, they worked as a freelance front-end web designer, SEO (search engine optimization) researcher, and analyst. After surviving a critical illness and near-death experience in early 2023, Zylaco decided to close their freelance business to devote themself full-time to painting and art-making. Learn more at