Hojas de Mango y Palma
Made with Acrylics on Wood finished with a Varnish. Made in Las Terrenas, The Dominican Republic.
Rest
I was in between stages of my life, having moved from an abusive spiritual community and landing back into my first home in La República Dominicana. By this point, I felt dead inside. I had become hyper-dependent on myself, and I needed to co-create with my environment something that would at least hold me up. Not through the anger of the past, but held by the creative energy that had always led me. In this home, although temporary and ultimately another one lost to the articles of time, I was able to salvage pieces that became art that will travel with me. I took one of the old wooden cabinets that had been left in the apartment and transformed it. Something primal took over. The innocence of reaching out into my environment and grabbing what I needed to be able to express my soul. I paid attention to the walls, to the nature around me, and let myself absorb the trees for two years.
A year later, the echoes of this home are gone, the time built in these relationships connected to this home shattering, and an understanding that sometimes we move through time sifting around pieces that feel the most potent to us. Even when we may not fully understand it, or no matter how painful these moments can be.
Each new iteration is less painful until the pain around it becomes a clear new standard of existence for ourselves. The borders of the pain, resisting at first, fading away with each new passing, until the new standard takes over.
Over time, floods make their way, the water is cleaned within the caverns, and the path becomes clearer.
