Selected Returns

Because of the Roots emerged from a vision about the seasons of human existence. Just as the Earth moves through winter, spring, summer and fall, human beings move through seasons of growth, abundance, decline, stillness and renewal.

The female figure becomes both woman and tree. Within her is new life. Beneath her are roots. Branches extend outward from her body, collapsing the distinction between human being and living landscape. Together these elements represent birth, death and rebirth not as opposing events, but as stages of one continuous cycle.

At the center of the work is the realization that an ending may only appear to be an ending. Even during seasons when nothing appears to be growing, the roots remain. They hold memory, nourishment and the possibility of what comes next.

Metanoia explores complete inner transformation through the alignment of heart and mind. At the center of the painting, the anatomical heart and brain are joined through a golden portal. Gold represents the value of the passage itself — the precious threshold through which transformation becomes possible.

The interior of the portal is dark. For the artist, darkness does not represent evil. It represents the place where the deepest work occurs. Transformation requires entering the uncomfortable, hidden and unresolved parts of the self rather than escaping them.

Smoke rising from the heart symbolizes the release of what can no longer accompany the transformed self. Above, orange light emerges like sunrise — the warmth and illumination available after heart and mind have come into alignment.

Metanoia generally refers to a profound change of mind or inner reorientation; the heart-mind alignment explored here is the artist's own symbolic interpretation within this painting.

Themes: Identity • Ancestry • Liberation • Transformation

Before we ever learn who we are, the world begins telling us who we should be.

The reaching hands and surrounding masks represent society, family, culture, judgment, and the many identities we learn to wear in order to belong. Chains wrap around the woman, symbolizing expectations, inherited beliefs, and roles that have attempted to define her.

Yet her upward-turned face and closed eyes suggest something different: remembrance.

The DNA helix connects her journey to ancestry and generational inheritance, while the ankh represents life and spiritual identity. Together, these symbols acknowledge that we carry the stories of those who came before us—but inheritance does not have to become destiny.

She can honor where she comes from without remaining imprisoned by everything she inherited.

This is the moment she stops asking:

“Who do they need me to be?”

And begins asking:

“Who am I?”

Breaking the Script is about reclaiming authorship of your own life—breaking the chains of expectation and becoming who you were always meant to be.