A Series About Coming Home: About "Canopies"
This series reflects the journey of taking risks, stepping out into the unknown, and finding clarity upon returning home.
Click the link to view fine art prints from the Canopies collection!
Canopies reflects the trees that surrounded my childhood. However, it wasn’t until I returned home after my own adventures away that I truly noticed them. They were exactly the same as when I left, and their steadfastness helped me realize how much I had changed. Painting this series became a meditative reflection. I used color, repetition, perspective, scale, experimentation, and spontaneous brushmarks to speak to the possibility, freedom, clarity, and understanding I had gained in returning to these trees.
These paintings contemplate the reflection upon returning home. In Joseph Campbell’s concept of “The Hero’s Journey,” there is an archetype of the “hero:” Who leaves the realm of the known for a call to adventure, encounters various trials and helpers after crossing that threshold (usually finding the classic “pit of despair,” and then circles back into the familiar, changed. (Think of Odysseus returning home from his adventures.)
That return to home is fascinating to me. It is where the journey is realized. Humans take these journeys in various degrees all of the time. It is a necessary part of existing in the world: To leave the comfort and shelter of the familiar and to take journeys into the unfamiliar.
However…. To come home, they first must leave. Returning to shelter and safety is an important part of that cycle and is the part of the journey that informs this work. The need to provide a safe space with compassion and empathy, to digest and reflect upon the most recent adventure, is the grounding force of this work.
“The Known” can be places of familiarity and communities of people. Relationships are one area humans provide that space and shelter for one another to return to: Holding another’s vulnerability and needs with delicate hands, empathy, and kindness. Physical locations such as home, or classrooms can provide space as well. Communities, such as casual friend groups and formal support networks are also sources of these safe spaces. Interestingly, those same places can also be unsafe for people, and the health of relationships which make them up being a large contributing factor.
It is my hope that you would find your own sense of clarity in them… either to reflect upon your recent homecoming, or to dare you to step out into your next adventure.