After Helene (I,II,III)
After Helene is a painting born from the chaos and quiet that followed Hurricane Helene’s passage through Western North Carolina—a storm that left landscapes gutted and communities disoriented. I painted it as both a personal response and a symbolic meditation on what it means to live through upheaval, especially in places where the land holds deep ancestral and emotional weight.
In the painting, a tornado dominates the sky—massive, spiraling, and impossibly alive. Its bands of color—rosy pinks, yellows, stormy blues—aren’t meant to be literal. They’re emotional tones, layered like memories of wind, pressure, and fear. The tornado presses down near a small, pale house on a hill—fragile, stubborn, and still standing.
That house could be anywhere in the mountains, but for me, it holds the spirit of all the places we try to call home, even when the world reshapes them.
Outside the house, there’s a woman—my stand-in, or maybe a broader symbol of someone caught between shelter and surrender. She’s holding up an egg. That egg is important. It’s delicate, absurdly so in the face of a storm, but it’s also a promise. Renewal. Potential. Life not yet broken. I held onto that image because, in the face of destruction, sometimes all we have left is the seed of something that might begin again.
To the left, what at first glance may look like smoke or ruin is actually a swarm of bees. They’ve come to represent so much to me—disruption, community, loss of balance, but also intelligence and resilience. After the hurricane, I thought a lot about ecosystems thrown into disorder, how everything small and essential—the pollinators, the roots, the rhythms—gets shaken.
The background trees are stark and bare, winter-white against a surreal sky. They’re stripped down to essentials, like we all were after the storm. And the water at the bottom, winding and restless, speaks to the floods, but also to emotional undercurrents—grief, adaptation, transformation.
After Helene is not just a story about a storm. It’s about the things we carry with us when we walk out of the wreckage. It’s about holding on to something—no matter how small or fragile—that can still become a future.
3 panels, 22”x30”
After Helene is a painting born from the chaos and quiet that followed Hurricane Helene’s passage through Western North Carolina—a storm that left landscapes gutted and communities disoriented. I painted it as both a personal response and a symbolic meditation on what it means to live through upheaval, especially in places where the land holds deep ancestral and emotional weight.
In the painting, a tornado dominates the sky—massive, spiraling, and impossibly alive. Its bands of color—rosy pinks, yellows, stormy blues—aren’t meant to be literal. They’re emotional tones, layered like memories of wind, pressure, and fear. The tornado presses down near a small, pale house on a hill—fragile, stubborn, and still standing.
That house could be anywhere in the mountains, but for me, it holds the spirit of all the places we try to call home, even when the world reshapes them.
Outside the house, there’s a woman—my stand-in, or maybe a broader symbol of someone caught between shelter and surrender. She’s holding up an egg. That egg is important. It’s delicate, absurdly so in the face of a storm, but it’s also a promise. Renewal. Potential. Life not yet broken. I held onto that image because, in the face of destruction, sometimes all we have left is the seed of something that might begin again.
To the left, what at first glance may look like smoke or ruin is actually a swarm of bees. They’ve come to represent so much to me—disruption, community, loss of balance, but also intelligence and resilience. After the hurricane, I thought a lot about ecosystems thrown into disorder, how everything small and essential—the pollinators, the roots, the rhythms—gets shaken.
The background trees are stark and bare, winter-white against a surreal sky. They’re stripped down to essentials, like we all were after the storm. And the water at the bottom, winding and restless, speaks to the floods, but also to emotional undercurrents—grief, adaptation, transformation.
After Helene is not just a story about a storm. It’s about the things we carry with us when we walk out of the wreckage. It’s about holding on to something—no matter how small or fragile—that can still become a future.
3 panels, 22”x30”
After Helene is a painting born from the chaos and quiet that followed Hurricane Helene’s passage through Western North Carolina—a storm that left landscapes gutted and communities disoriented. I painted it as both a personal response and a symbolic meditation on what it means to live through upheaval, especially in places where the land holds deep ancestral and emotional weight.
In the painting, a tornado dominates the sky—massive, spiraling, and impossibly alive. Its bands of color—rosy pinks, yellows, stormy blues—aren’t meant to be literal. They’re emotional tones, layered like memories of wind, pressure, and fear. The tornado presses down near a small, pale house on a hill—fragile, stubborn, and still standing.
That house could be anywhere in the mountains, but for me, it holds the spirit of all the places we try to call home, even when the world reshapes them.
Outside the house, there’s a woman—my stand-in, or maybe a broader symbol of someone caught between shelter and surrender. She’s holding up an egg. That egg is important. It’s delicate, absurdly so in the face of a storm, but it’s also a promise. Renewal. Potential. Life not yet broken. I held onto that image because, in the face of destruction, sometimes all we have left is the seed of something that might begin again.
To the left, what at first glance may look like smoke or ruin is actually a swarm of bees. They’ve come to represent so much to me—disruption, community, loss of balance, but also intelligence and resilience. After the hurricane, I thought a lot about ecosystems thrown into disorder, how everything small and essential—the pollinators, the roots, the rhythms—gets shaken.
The background trees are stark and bare, winter-white against a surreal sky. They’re stripped down to essentials, like we all were after the storm. And the water at the bottom, winding and restless, speaks to the floods, but also to emotional undercurrents—grief, adaptation, transformation.
After Helene is not just a story about a storm. It’s about the things we carry with us when we walk out of the wreckage. It’s about holding on to something—no matter how small or fragile—that can still become a future.
3 panels, 22”x30”