A Letter to One Who is Becoming

Creation Blooms Out of Nothing
One of the first paintings I made—years ago, back in culinary school—was titled A Soft Place to Land.
It held both fire and gentleness. This piece carries that same frequency: a hug wrapped around an explosion.
It is shelter in the storm. Softness blooming inside the rupture. A place to be held while everything shifts.

When I first laid paint to this canvas, it wanted to be something else— a quiet, ethereal serenity. But when I returned the next day, it had changed. Or I had. It wanted motion. So I listened.

Colors collided. Muted tones whispered under raw gestures. Brushstrokes broke through the stillness. Green anchored everything. Indian yellow emerged, radiant and insistent, from the depths of Payne’s grey. Life pushed through the surface.

I didn’t yet know her name. But when I stepped back, I saw it: Creation Blooms Out of Nothing.

She arrived to remind me— that we are not in control of the unfolding. That joy and grief come unannounced. A stranger becomes a sister. A lover disappears forever. The moment cracks us open. And still, we bloom.

To the one who will one day live with this piece -

You know what it means to stand inside transformation.
This painting will meet you there. May it hold you, as it held me.