“Look, don’t touch.” Parents have been saying this to their children forever.

To Daisy Marin, a sophomore at Colton High School, that’s ridiculous.

Marin is a painter, and her paintings are a tactile experience. She loves to express her art in a way that invites people to touch it rather than just look at it. They are a tangible experience, incorporating mixed media, a variety of textures, and even three-dimensional elements.

As a kid, Marin loved feeling other paintings and just the texture of things. She has always loved art, and started to paint around the age of 5. So, basically, she has been painting for her whole life. 

Most of her paintings are about dramatic human emotions. One of the most interesting paintings is about how the mind interprets emotions. Standing out against a gray background layered with swirls of pink are a number of faces experiencing a range of emotions: fear, joy, excitement, hurt, and more. White abstract shapes contrast against the background, and the gray has been cut through and stitched back together with neon green thread. There’s a blue heart with an eye popping out of the canvas. It is a work that showcases an understanding of depression that maybe words can’t completely explain.

So how does a sensitive, quiet person like Marin come up with such bold ideas?

“I don’t really have a motivation, I just do it,” Marin said. “It’s kind of like temptation, I guess.”

To Marin, painting is currently just a hobby. She isn’t sure if she would like to go to college for art, it’s just a possibility that she might pursue that route. She doesn’t fully plan on being an artist when she is older. She doesn’t feel like she would want to share her artwork with a lot of people just yet.