8' x 16"
Acrylic on Canvas
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Unbroken, Still Rooted & Rising 🔥
Deeply Rooted is a surreal meditation on resilience, transformation, and the quiet strength that emerges through adversity. Two succulent forms … one luminous and pale, the other deep crimson … intertwine against flowing marble textures threaded with gold. Crimson drips and organic forms suggest intensity and emotional weight, while the composition itself remains grounded, structured, and alive. This piece reflects the idea that true endurance is not always forceful or loud… sometimes it is simply rooted deeply enough to grow back.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about whether we truly choose what we do… or whether some things choose us. Over the last several years, I went through a series of experiences that left me exhausted, disconnected, and questioning nearly everything about myself. There was a period where I genuinely tried to walk away from art. I stopped painting. I worked as a carpenter in the mountains along Colorado’s Front Range and tried to convince myself I could leave this part of my life behind. But even when I wasn’t creating, I was still seeing in compositions. I still noticed the way light moved across buildings. I still imagined color relationships and rearranged the world in my mind.
I couldn’t shut it off.
Not because I was forcing it… but because it was rooted deeper than motivation.
At some point, I realized creating was never simply a pursuit or identity for me. It was nature. It’s how I process beauty, grief, chaos, memory, and meaning all at once. And when I tried to deny that part of myself, it didn’t bring peace … it created a deeper kind of emptiness.
That realization changed something in me.
I stopped viewing resilience as force. I stopped believing strength meant refusing to break. The truth is, I did break. I collapsed under the weight of certain experiences and lost parts of myself for a while. But eventually I understood that survival is not always an act of resistance. Sometimes it’s something quieter. Sometimes it’s instinct. Sometimes it’s nature. Sometimes the roots simply remain alive beneath the surface long enough to grow back.
That understanding became the foundation for Deeply Rooted.
The succulents in this piece are not fighting outwardly. They are structured, grounded, and alive. The drips suggest intensity and emotional weight, yet the form remains intact. To me, this painting reflects a quieter kind of endurance …one rooted not in force, but in the natural instinct to heal, rebuild, and continue becoming.
And maybe, in different ways, we are all deeply rooted in something we were meant to become.
