From the time I was a young man, I considered the woods a magical place to escape from the turmoil and darkness of the world. While my internal world warred against itself, the beauty of the symbiosis beneath the forest canopy brought me peace. Traveling to far away places and an obsession with seeking out the places few people had sought just to bear witness guided my goals.
On a cold and dreary morning in 2023, I was arrested and incarcerated for a crime I did not commit with a prospective punishment of up to twenty years in prison. Unlike many less fortunate than I, I was allowed to live freely on bond while facing this new war within myself. The most immediate consequence of this was a condition that I could not leave the area. The world I had grown to love to explore shrunk to just a few hundred square miles and the walls perpetually closed in. Still, that was better than the twenty square foot prison cell so I was thankful none the less. I searched internally to find my peace and yet again I found it in the humid air of the forest floor. After all, the ladybugs and butterflies know nothing of felonies or depositions or bond conditions.
In the midst of this, my wonderful wife gifted me with a set of gouache paints and some paper and I set upon a new adventure to compose this beautiful world of abundance and light that had for three decades only existed in my head. I was and am influenced heavily by the beauty and love of the world through the eyes of Edward Hicks and his composition of love. The whimsy of Fritz Baumgarten speaks deeply to my vision of the interpersonal connection of even the smallest of God's creatures and how they rely on each other with no motivation of greed.
There are many palpable facets to this collective hell we share, but shining through are innumerable threads in the beauty of the heaven's we build together. This one is mine, for my wife, for my children, for those locked away from the light of their own families, and for you.