Phyllis graduated with a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design where she received the Florence Leif Award, and has been an artist-in-residence at Lijiang Studio in Yunnan province, China.

Statement
My foster mother raised me in China for seven years before I moved to New York permanently. During my upbringing China introduced me to poetry, language and literature, and NYC exposed me to graffiti and hip hop. As a child in-between cultures, my work reflects the awkward, complex attempts to reconcile these contrasting influences. While I paint, draw and weave, I also work through feelings of anger and alienation to make peace with my maternal abandonment. These experiences gather in my artworks to create a depiction of myself, a person having grown between two cultures and from family traumas.