Title: Bent, Not Broken
Size: 24 x 36
Medium: Acrylic, collage, inktense pencils
 
The Boreal Chickadee does not flee when winter comes. While others migrate to warmer, easier places, this small and mighty bird stays, even enduring the harshest cold and the longest nights. During the bitter winter that tests everything, it does not just survive. It sings.
 
This painting is for the people in your life who didn't look away when your world collapsed. Who showed up with food, with silence, with presence, with phone calls at midnight. Who sat with you in the unbearable and never once made you feel like too much. They stayed right there on the branch beside you, bent by the weight of it all, but never broken.
 
Grief is hard. But if you are truly lucky,  you do not go through it alone. This is for the ones who made sure you didn't. This piece was inspired by the family and friends who stayed with me during my "winter season" just a few years ago.
 
About the Collection
This collection began with a simple idea: no matter who we are, we all share the same human experiences and emotions. "Under the Same Sky" explores the many ways we experience those connections… the excitement of a new friendship, the quiet comfort of being understood, the distance that stretches relationships, and the joy of finding your way back to one another. These moments are all depicted using scenes of birds mixed with collage.