Tender.

I began painting what it felt like to receive someone’s tenderness. It felt like walking through a field of soft flower petals, except the flowers were bigger than me and the wind swayed in all directions. -joyful, peaceful.

And then I thought of pain. To tenderize something, connected tissues have to be broken down, this leads to a softening. So too, must the human heart be softened. This is a culmination of both joyful and painful experiences, the bellows of life pressing and releasing us between happiness and sorrow.

Created with a brush and my bare fingers, this piece embodies the journey a soul takes to become tender. It doesn’t shy away from the pain and difficulty endured in learning to extend others Grace and compassion - complex gestures carved through years of experiencing the effects of life.

There are bruises in this piece. A series of pressure points created through literal finger prints with carefully arranged color appear as a pleasant texture, but a close-up reveals that this floral expression contains countless moments of painful and challenging experience.