I Saved You a Spot

72 × 60 inches
Acrylic and water on canvas
2026
Signed and dated
$6,480

I Saved You a Spot began with Cancer.

I use the zodiac as a prompt rather than a rule, and when I started thinking about Cancer, I kept coming back to home. My husband is a Cancer, and I watch him care for our girls and his patients with this chaotically large heart. He is always making room for someone.

I wanted to paint that feeling.

The tree came first. Its branches create little places for nests, birds and tiny communities to exist. None of them feel permanent, and I don't think they need to. I've been thinking a lot about belonging in the moment. Home can look like all sorts of things. Sometimes it is simply knowing someone saved you a spot.

At 72 × 60 inches, this is the largest painting I've ever made. I usually rely on loud, punchy color, but at this scale, the loudness didn't need to come from the palette. The size could be loud. The painting could be quiet.

I diluted my acrylic with water for the first time while making this piece. I needed to move quickly and give up some control. The paint ran, dripped and blurred, allowing the entire landscape to share the same loose visual language. Even the moon is deliberately faded. I wanted to make a moon without really making a moon. It isn't the main character, but it's still a player.

Ironically, I didn't feel particularly calm or confident while I was painting this. I was frustrated and far too close to it. I hung it in my home and felt strangely vulnerable when people saw it. I wasn't even planning to offer it for sale until people kept asking about it.

Eventually, I brought it back into the studio and saw it again with fresh eyes.

What I saw was confidence. And calm.

Maybe that's what I love most about it. Somehow I made a painting that held the feelings I couldn't access while I was making it.

I Saved You a Spot is about finding wonder in big, wild things. Trees, water, birds, Louisiana landscapes. It's about being comfortable with what you don't know and happy where you've landed. Most of all, it's about the quiet ways we care for one another.

There is a place for you here. I saved you a spot.