Making Honey

36x48”
Acrylic and 24k Gold Leaf on Canvas
2025

Honey is not made by simply collecting pollen, and life cannot thrive where the dead are not allowed to rot.

The garden in the soul doesn’t grow overnight. Turning pollen into honey or blood into gold is an alchemical process where it hurts more before it gets better. Everything gets broken and reformed, down to the basic building blocks of our identities. It’s easy to gloss over what’s leeching your life when you’ve convinced yourself this is what you deserve, it’s who you are, or it’s the best it’s gonna get. It’s easy to cling to something that’s not working when youve spent years building it. It’s not about creating unwavering perfection, but mercilessly challenging everything we think we know and composting the things that keep moments of perfection from happening.

There comes a time in life when the weight everything becomes too much. Self-destructive coping mechanisms, vices, pain, and living in survival mode strips one of their identity and connection to this collaborative reality. This is when we are faced with a choice: change, or die.  We either succumb to what we’ve lost ourselves to, or take a leap of faith into a new unknown, knowing it will hurt either way. Not everyone survives the transition… but what’s scarier, letting things continue to whither where you are indefinitely, or risking your life to create something true?