NOWHERE TO BE BUT HERE (2024)
This is the season of motherhood, imagination, belonging and growth
There is nowhere I need to be but here.
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Nowhere To Be But Here is a collection of paintings about perception, absence, presence, and developing a new sense of orientation when challenges appear. I began work on these paintings eight months after giving birth to a baby girl and having recently moved with my family to a small rural town in Montana. I looked back at my first months as a mother. As I grappled with my new body, surroundings, and profound personal changes, I found that the key to redefining myself was viewing my experiences from a different perspective. In those months, when wilderness was not easily accessible to me, the act of imagining walks in nature became an energizing inspiration for navigating my new life.
During the course of this journey, my paintings developed gradually into poetic landscapes built from memory, imagination, and layers of paint. Ambiguous versus sharp, defined elements; opposing forces where plant-like forms promise growth while tangled tree branches hinder my path; dense textural areas versus airy expansive surfaces all combining to symbolize an evolving connection to my environment.
