Breaking Free, oil on canvas, 10.5x8", framed, 2026

In Breaking Free, two figures share the canvas in strikingly different states. One stands quietly, almost like a shadow or witness, while the other bursts forward in energetic strokes of blue, white, and red. The figure seems less contained by its physical form, caught somewhere between falling, reaching, dancing, and becoming.

As part of the Emergence series, I see this work in the context of healing and rebirth. We may do much of our inner work alone, but we don't necessarily emerge alone. Other people—family, friends, communities, even those who simply stand beside us—can help pull us out of ourselves and reconnect us with the world.

Breaking Free is about that movement outward: from isolation toward connection, from being held in place toward becoming part of life again.