Collections

Rooted & Rising is a collection of animal portraits and seascapes that grew out of a question I kept circling back to in the studio: what does it look like to stay grounded while still reaching for something new? Underneath that question is the layered experience of motherhood and mentorship, the instinct to protect something and also let it go. For me, roots have always meant family first, my three boys running in and out of the studio while I work, painting happening right alongside real life instead of separate from it.

That's part of why the backgrounds on the cow pieces in this collection are true collaborations. My boys added their own marks, colors, and squiggles to those canvases before I layered the animals on top, so what looks like background in a few of these pieces actually started as their hands moving across it first, a kind of generational imprint and shared becoming. Cows and horses show up throughout the collection not just as subjects but as stand-ins for nurture, strength, and quiet resilience.

The seascapes came from a quieter place, painting the shoreline, the tide pulling in and out in that steady, patient rhythm the ocean has. That same rhythm echoes what it feels like to guide someone else, the calm, the turbulence, and the steady light that stays after both. Rising is what happens when we trust those roots, family included, enough to grow anyway.

This collection came together slowly, piece by piece, over a season of showing up to the easel even when I wasn't sure what would come of it, and letting my kids show up right alongside me on the pieces where it fit. That's really what the work is about underneath the animals and the seascapes: progress over perfection, creativity woven into real life instead of set apart from it, and the sacred, everyday act of holding space for someone while also encouraging them to fly.

A few pieces carry that weight more literally. In Rare Solitude, a mother steals a rare, quiet moment for herself, a small stillness in a life that rarely offers one. In The Weight of Everything, a small cow sits inside a sea of cluttered chaos, a picture of how much gets carried internally, quietly, even when it doesn't show on the outside.

Rooted & Rising debuted as a solo exhibition at the Visual Art Center of New Jersey. I'm so glad it's found its way here too. Take your time moving through the pieces, and see where a small hand left its mark.