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From the series Between Stillness and Flight: Portraits of a Whitetail Herd
Pride is the second painting in Between Stillness and Flight, a series inspired by the whitetail herd that lives in the woods surrounding our Arkansas home.
Pride captures a moment I won’t forget: the first time this mother brought her new fawn out of the woods.
For weeks, she had been coming to our home two or three times a day for water. Her visits had become familiar, and as I watched her more closely, I realized she had recently given birth. Then one day, she emerged from the woods with her baby beside her.
There is something about the mothers in this herd that I find both fierce and ethereal. They are extraordinarily protective and constantly alert, yet there is a quietness and grace to the way they move through the landscape with their young. I wanted the colors and marks in Pride to hold both of those qualities: strength and softness, vigilance and light.
Since that first appearance, we’ve had the privilege of watching this mother devote herself to protecting and raising her fawn, while getting to watch the little one grow up right alongside her.
Built through layers of acrylic, drawing media, transparent passages and opaque marks, Pride moves between representation and abstraction. The forest appears in fragments, while vertical strokes of light filter down from above, giving the pair a world that feels observed but not entirely revealed.