Title: Awakening

Materials: Acrylic on Canvas

Size: 48" x 30"

*Collection of Monica Valitalo

This is part of a series of paintings that includes "Changing" and "Gift." Sometimes the devastating experience of loss can awaken a heightened awareness and a new interpretation of the moments each day brings us. It is a painful kind of birth. Yet that birth brings blessings that temper the sorrow and the emptiness.

Although not directly apparent, the setting for these three paintings was a landfill site, now a hill with a view, covered in grass. As I stood there in the glow of the setting sun and took photographs, I was struck by how this place of "garbage" had become, for me, beautiful. And that is part of what this show,"Grace," is about: encountering beauty amidst the ugliness, discovering the poetry that transforms the pain, letting go of expectations and receiving new paths. Waking up
to a new world.