“I started this painting in early 2020 before the pandemic official started. California was hot and Australia was on fire. I painted snow as a means of comfort. By the time I finished the acrylic painting California was engulfed in smoke as fires raged minutes from my house. When I started this painting I knew I wanted to explore landscape and texture, but I couldn’t imagine how the next couple months would evolve and how limited my studio time would become, with my son at home while I tried to teach through zoom. While I was in grad school I was constantly told to use large grand gestures, but outside of grad school I started to see those gestures as a traditionally masculine way of seeing the world, where the history of female creativity was full of small marks and stitches. I started drawing tiny marks on my paintings. The obvious progression was to start stitching these marks. This painting was my first attempt at this. When I was looking at the original painting before I added the stitching it seemed obsolete. Life had been blurred, transformed, and manipulated. I wanted to create a haze and a barrier to look through into the original image. At first I stitched a flame like pattern, as the fires continued to rage around us, but the pattern never worked. I put the painting away for months and came back to it as the Delta variant emerged and the hope to the pandemic’s end was blurred and prolonged. My original idea to a barrier was realized. I hope to someday be able to jump in that snow. I have no idea if society will ever get there.”