She immigrated with her parents as a seven-year old, and through studies and travel has integrated Laotian, Vietnamese and Australian influences in her art.
[1] Her art reflects cross-cultural influences in contemporary Australia as she fuses her personal experiences, dual cultures, and painterly abstraction.
After nine months in a Thai refugee camp, an Australian aunt sponsored them to emigrate to Australia.
She grew up in a community that practiced Tehravada Buddhism that is prevalent in South and Southeast Asia.
She was accepted at the Nepean College of the Arts, University of Western Sydney based on her portfolio, not her HSC results.
[5] During her last year of art school she moved to the studio-home of painter Roy Jackson who was part of the Wedderburn artistic community near Campbelltown south of Sydney and adjacent to a national park.
[1] In the years after art school, her work integrated elements from Australian landscape and symbols from Laotian textiles.
Time and motherhood helped her feel anchored in Australia and as the artist has said in interview:"Feeling at home in Australia is an anchor, it allows me the freedom to go back to the place of my birth in my mother’s village in Champasak and research for my current work.
"[1]Her paintings are said to evoke the chanting and music of Laos, and the Laotian community in Australia, which her father, a Buddhist monk, serves.
She came back from India with a series of delicate works on paper that echo the colours of traditional subcontinental painting.
[6] Overall patterns in her work recall the mandalas used for meditation in Buddhism, and also show an affinity with Southeast Asian textiles.