The Visitor

The initial spark for this piece goes back to my grandfather’s basement, one of those kitschy mid-century spaces with wallpaper that made it feel like you were looking out into a wilderness vista. That memory stayed with me. Something about the artificial landscape, the attempt to turn an interior room into another world, kept bouncing around in my mind looking for somewhere to land.

This image began from that place, but at first it was too calm, too settled into being just a landscape. What changed it was interruption. I introduced the craft, then the deer as witness, and finally the helmet, which pushed the image into stranger territory. It stopped being simply scenic and became harder to place in time or world, familiar and altered at once.

That tension is what I was after. I wanted the piece to feel beautiful, but also slightly unsettling, as if something had entered the scene or had always been there just beneath the surface.

Available on Etsy. Custom sizes are also available on request.