 My name is Gabrielle Watson. I live and work in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I paint in oil on Kansas. I work from photographs for the most part. Some of them are taken myself. Others I've just picked out from friends and family. Sometimes an image will just really pop out to me and I'll feel compelled to paint it. Everyone that I do paint, I know personally. A lot of them are friends or ex-situations. So there's definitely an intimacy in my work. When I first come across a photograph, I don't think about it in a linear fashion. Something will just really pop out and appeal to me about that photo. I think a lot of it has to do with my personal aesthetic, how I do like things to be in focus and up close. I like to focus on, I guess, human emotion. It's also very important to me that emotion is captured or that a moment is captured. Maybe this particular photograph tells a story or it's just indicative of the time or a moment. Some artists have sketch pads. I kind of just don't follow my thoughts or all my little things that I'm experimenting with, working with. But it's a learning experience because I take that onto a piece where I can very literally follow that through to the end. Being in New York has definitely informed my work just because most of my subjects are here. Brooklyn is just such a tight-knit community. You can look at my paintings and I'm sure if you pay attention, you'll see all of these people on the street. It's one of the most creative cities in the world, I'd say. I travel a lot and I love just the grittiness of New York. Everyone's just doing their own thing and it's not a clean creativity at all. And I really, really love that.