Home to Me

July 2025 | First Friday exhibit, Arts Incarnate gallery, Harrisonburg VA

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Thinking about college and plans for my future has brought me to a question: What is home? And, more important to me as I contemplate moving away from the home where I have lived my whole life: Can I find home and belonging in a different place? 

As I thought about these questions, my mind went to nature, including the nature I have experienced away from home. On past family vacations I found myself feeling entirely at home in natural environments like Badlands National Park or Graham Lake in Maine, but felt detached in places like New York City and Washington, D.C. where nature comes in curated bits and pieces. Part of this detachment was surely related to living in a rural area for as long as I remember, but it also feels like more than that. For me, maybe the deeper meaning of home, besides family and community, is my connection to the wildness of nature. In these paintings I have tried to capture my love for nature in the Shenandoah Valley, a time capsule of my first home.