2011 Painted on gessoed paper. Mounted on rag board and floated on foam core. Maple venner frame, museum glass.

"Facing Water" is a portrait of my daughter Olivia nearing young adulthood. Pictured before a river estuary, a view from the home where she was raised, her back is turned toward us. The painting represents an imagining of a time in her future, both promising and uncertain, when she would eventually leave home and family. The painting is, in essence, a shared emotional portrait. In the midst of our shifting mother daughter relationship, I became aware of my own grappling with complex feelings, inevitably confronted with letting go as my only child ventured out into the world. Ours would be a shared experience--both of us leaving a past, both of us facing an expansive, unknown future.