What began as a simple tree covered in ivy turned into roughly 18 months of exploring how I see the forest.

Within this time, I've created many paintings focused on trees and their personalities, along with attempting to capture the atmosphere of the forest as indirectly as I can. Forestry pushes me to paint more intuitively, and I've begun to trust myself more in the moments where I need to let go of control to let the paint define itself.

I sit in the same chair looking at the same patch of nature every morning when I have my coffee - 15 minutes of nothing but silently looking at nature without my phone, TV, computer, book, or any other distraction - and every day I see something new, I find something to be more interesting than I remember, or I just enter a meditative state where I think about things a little deeper than I would during the day. I witness the seasons change, the plants come and go, the animals living...

This piece started as an autumn painting. But as I observed the changes occurring around me, I evolved the painting into winter and then onto the cusp of spring. My admiration for that winter-to-spring transition has increased exponentially since 2023, and this painting exemplifies that concept of life emerging out of cyclical darkness.