Essor

"I've always been drawn to the moment just before leaving — when the body is still here but something in you has already gone. I worked light into this surface, layer after layer, until it stopped being white and started being air. The black fragments weren't meant to be dark. They were meant to be free — things that had finally let go. I didn't plan the gold. I never do. But when it arrived, I understood: this painting was never about flight. It was about the courage right before it."