I’ve begun to notice the birds that surround me. Once aware of their world, I knew I could never un-notice. Beating wings and whistles everywhere, have become an unrelenting comfort. What was once background noise became a presence. Their songs pulled me out of my head and back into a physical world much bigger than myself.

Recently I’ve pondered the foreign feeling of flight and the freedom we associate with it. As I’ve encountered new experiences in the last year, it has been easy to compare flight to the new freedoms I face; But, over the months I’ve spent creating these pieces, my understanding has shifted. I’ve begun to feel that flight is not freedom when it is bound to love by nature. A bird in the sky still flies back to the eggs in its nest, and to the warmth of the south when winter comes. “Free as a bird” is only apprehensible to the human onlooker. Perhaps it is the boundaries created by love and survival that free us to act– or, to fly.

Put simply, these paintings are a manifestation of my curiosity toward the flight of birds, and the freedom found in the confines of love.