I created this surreal, richly textured piece as a kind of mirror of where I am right now. A ghostly human face slowly emerges from a dense, shadowy tangle of branches, roots, and half-formed, organic shapes—almost like a forest remembering it once was a person. Pale runes and handwritten symbols drift across the skin and slip into the background, as if thoughts, memories, or old stories are trying to surface and then sink back into the dark again.
Above it all, a soft, translucent crescent moon hangs in the sky, with scattered, star-like lights flickering around it. Those small points of light feel to me like questions, wishes, or tiny anchors of hope in the thick, dusky atmosphere. The deep teal, indigo, crimson, rust, and muted gold tones carry the weight of autumn—the in-between season when everything is fading and glowing at the same time, when the air feels full of endings and beginnings layered together.
While I was working on it, I kept returning to that autumn mood I’m living in right now: the quiet, the long shadows, the sense of shedding and turning inward. I added the elements I always find myself drawn to—nature, the moon, the stars, and symbolic marks that don’t have a single fixed meaning but feel deeply familiar. The layered brushwork, worn surfaces, and distressed textures are my way of making the image feel ancient and dreamlike, like a fragment of a story you half-remember from a dream. For me, this piece holds a feeling of being haunted but also gently held by the world, as if the forest, the night sky, and all those hidden symbols are watching over a very private transformation.
