Restoration: Thankfulness

This piece is called Restoration: Thankfulness. It’s part of a pair I created during a time when I was thinking a lot about what it means to come through something—not unchanged, but more aware. Grateful.

The textures you see are built up in layers, almost like a landscape of experience. I let the warmer tones break through deliberately—her outstretched arms and kneeling figure are in burnished golds and reds. Light filters through and fills the canvas, arching out from her flung-back face. If you look closely at the canvas, you'll see the scratches and the gouges, the roughness of the mesh/netting which has been holding the figure hostage to pain, as it's released out of her and melts into healing. There’s history in this surface, but it’s not weighed down by the past. It’s about emergence.

I wanted the work to feel both grounded and illuminated—so it would sit confidently in a space but also quietly pull you in. To become a kind of daily reminder for people. Of what they have come through. Of what they've survived, and the inner strength they've (re-)discovered. Of joy, of celebration, of thankfulness. Of what matters.