Growth

My grandmother and great aunt loved art, and their homes were full of oil paintings—figures in English pastures in ornate gold frames. I couldn’t quite connect with these paintings, though there was something inarticulate in them that I loved. As I began “Circling Growth,” I realized it contained the colors of my ancestors’ paintings: the musty roses, the yellow ochres. Initially I couldn’t connect with it either, so I went to my great aunt’s house and finished painting this, surrounded by the art she loved.

Circling Growth is a listening to the ancestors, that soft feminine. It’s a bow to all they did on my behalf, and to the self-growth they paved the way for.