In this piece, I wanted to paint more than just a forest...I hoped to invite you into a landscape that breathes with something beyond bark and brook. A spiritual allegory, really, clothed in the familiar textures of moss, root, and filtered light. I wasn't trying to capture scenery... I was trying to capture a hush.
That sacred stillness where something extraordinary feels just a breath away.
The inspiration came, quite unmistakably, from the story of the Sacred Grove. A boy walked into that grove preoccupied-weighted by real or imagined feelings of inadequacy, his mind tangled in personal weakness. And yet, he went not because he felt worthy, but because he believed. What happened there wasn't just miraculous-it was intimate. A whisper from Heaven. A warmth. A quiet assurance from a Father to His son: "I see you. There's more in you than you know. And what I've planned ...it will come, bit by bit, in its own beautiful time."
That idea moved me deeply. I wanted to suggest that kind of space personal, raw, open. A place where heaven might draw near and the soul, however trembling, might dare to listen. And more than that, a place where someone can walk away loosed from a paralyzing mindset, awakened to who they really are.
I don't think such places are confined to Palmyra or to the past. I believe we each have a grove maybe not of trees, but of stillness. A quiet sanctuary where we can seek, ask, and find. Where clarity comes not from perfection, but from honest intent.
This painting is my testimony of that belief. That in the midst of life's noise, there is peace to be found...and in that peace, the confidence to rise, to act, and to move forward with trust in the unfolding.
