2020

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was such a big disconnect between my peaceful little cabin life and the fear seeping in through my phone. It felt like a movie. As the weeks of quarantine and no childcare dragged on, as my business closed, I started drawing crowded gardens. Gardens that continued to grow despite a darkness in the undergrowth; I thought of it as a relentless, suffocating kind of growth. With my whole family home 24/7, there was no retreat, no break. It was a mix of loneliness and never being alone, contrasting sharply with the beauty of my growing kids and our woods. I thought a lot about safety (my kids, my parents) and I thought a lot about mental illness — about hanging on to sanity, when we can, and the chaotic wildness that may happen if we can’t.