Be Still and Know

Thematically, I have long been interested in our necessity to strike a balance between comfort and discomfort. I am fascinated by the resilience of people living in uncomfortable circumstances but managing to find comfort in wholesome ways. I am equally moved by the horrors people can experience as a result of being too comfortable. I often draw inspiration from cycles or waves, creating encaustic pieces that possess an eerie, dreamlike quality. The limiting, yet expansive, nature of metaphorical imagery has made my art accessible over the years, inviting interpretation even from viewers who do not normally consider themselves art lovers. A fellow undergrad student once said my artwork “allows people to be with pain.” This versatile medium lets me not only freely explore, but also capture viscerally, the nuances of themes like weight vs. delicacy, pain vs. pleasure, clarity vs. confusion, and deterioration vs. growth.

Although my encaustic work up to now has often been intense, heavy, and dark, Be Still and Know (currently in progress), turns a page toward a new, lighter chapter. It’s showing signs already that it will maintain intensity, but I expect it will aim to inspire awe and hope. This series invites people to approach and sit with difficult emotions, without an urgent desire to avoid them or fix them, without a sense of hopelessness, but instead with the calm of knowing that they are inevitable, necessary, and temporary. The series, Be Still and Know, explores the threshold – both so far and near, full of questioning and of knowing, so vastly complex and so very simple – where humans feel their connection with God.