I came to the US in 2007 as a graduate student and this painting portrays my first apartment building in Brookings, South Dakota where I lived for two years. I have good memories living in that apartment as a student. The building was dismantled after a few years and it now lives in this painting and my memory.

The car in the picture has its own story. Two other students in that building abandoned that car after it broke and it sat in that spot for the entire time I lived in that apartment. That’s why the snow piled up around it never got cleared throughout the winter.