On The Scenic Path

On the Scenic Path is a nature-inspired love letter to the winding, indirect, and often unexpected routes that shape a life.

This collection was created during a season of profound change. After more than a decade spent developing myself to fit within a career I had worked hard to build, I was blindsidingly fired by a mentor whom I deeply respected. The experience left me grieving not only the loss of the job itself, but also the version of my future- and of myself- that I had spent years constructing around it.

Soon afterward, I was diagnosed as Autistic, giving new language to parts of myself I had spent much of my life learning to mask, adapt, and conceal. In the midst of that upheaval, painting this collection became a way to process grief, uncertainty, identity, and the difficult work of separating who I truly am from who I had learned I was supposed to be.

The works in this collection explore the beauty, power, and resilience of nature, but rarely remain entirely realistic. Familiar scenery bends, shifts, and moves into the surreal, reflecting the way life itself can become unfamiliar when the path ahead changes unexpectedly. These altered landscapes became a space to explore both loss and possibility—to mourn the life I had worked so hard to achieve while making room for one that might fit me more honestly.

Ultimately, this collection honors the path that brought me here, including its detours, endings, and unexpected turns. It is about learning to move through the world in a way that feels natural rather than prescribed, and finding beauty not despite the indirect route, but because of it.

On the Scenic Path is an invitation to consider that a meaningful life does not always follow the most direct road. Sometimes the winding way is the one that brings us closest to ourselves.