Lost in the Woods

Watercolor and ink on paper, 12”x 16”, 2020

I painted this while recovering from one of two major surgeries I had in 2020. It was a period of my life when I felt as though I was watching the world go on around me from a vantage point outside of it all, and I was searching for the way back through a fog of pain. Art was my way back. I have always felt most connected to my own spirit in the woods. Anyone who has been in the woods at night knows that strange dichotomy between the beauty of the forest and the eerie, otherworldly stillness of the all-encompassing dark. Sometimes we have to hold two contrasting truths in each hand: pain in one, beauty in the other; darkness in one, lightness in the other; stillness in one, momentum in the other. I had to lose myself in order to find a path I’d never have found otherwise.