"My new husband and I spent some of our recent honeymoon gallivanting around Germany’s lush, creaking Black Forest. Its haunting beauty exceeded my already high expectations. The vivid greens, the cake-like sponginess of the mossy forest floor, the intricate patterns of light dancing against an inky black as the sun’s rays filtered through the dense canopy above into ephemeral, lacy drops. It struck me that while the paths carved through that region are objectively beautiful, my experience of it seemed to be heightened by the particular context of my honeymoon visit. The acute newness of an exciting next chapter and the rosy promises that came with it had catapulted me into a state of bliss. It was a new, brighter world - and it looked it.

This body of work is centered around the landscapes that surrounded this tender time in my life: places I visited with dear friends just before and in recent past, the site near the actual wedding, and places my partner and I planned to visit on our travels just after. The heightened value I place on these locations due to the role they played during this meaningful time in my life will likely remain in my psyche forever. Because I believe the intrinsic value we place on the natural world is so deeply rooted in our personal connections to it, I think there is an imperative for our collective species to cultivate and honor these connections. These paintings are an ode to that idea, and to the two-way relationship we have with the world around us as we are shaped by it, and it is in turn shaped by us."