RUST A Reflection on Erosion, Becoming, and the Prophecy of Vitality
In 2019, everything began to shift. What I had known and what I had built started to erode. Slowly at first, and then all at once. By 2023, the ground gave way entirely. I found myself standing in a season I can only describe as rust. The after of everything familiar. A space where certainty dissolves and nothing quite holds.
We don’t often question the foundations we stand on until they fall apart. For some, that moment never comes. But for others, it arrives through loss: a job, a body, a loved one, a sense of self. And with it, a reckoning. That reckoning is the rusty season.
It doesn’t knock. It breaks. It hollows. It lingers. But it also reveals.
The Rust series was born in this space. Not as a conclusion, but a beginning. These works did not emerge from clarity but from survival. From waking when the body begged for collapse. From learning that living doesn’t always mean understanding. Sometimes, it simply means continuing. And continuing, here, requires belief that even in erosion, a prophecy of vitality is waiting.
This body of work considers decay not as defeat but as evidence. Through layers of acrylic, ink, plaster, and paper, each painting becomes a textured offering—fractured, corroded, and deeply alive. The figures that emerge do not claim shape. They remember it. These are not portrayals. They are residues.
Palimpsest is not just a technique. It is the nature of memory.
Each piece holds tension between what is fading and what is forming. Celebration, in this context, is not resolution. It is resistance. It is choosing to find beauty in the breaking. Not triumph, but truth.
The rusty season is not merely about damage. It is about the quiet grace that rises when we pass through what tried to undo us. About the kind of persistence that does not posture but endures. About asking with bare hands what part of us refuses to erode.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
An Invitation
If you are moving through your own rusty season, don’t rush it away. Sit with it. Ask what it is demanding of you and what it is making of you.
And when the smallest ember of beauty appears, choose it. Hold it. Let it shape the version of you that emerges.
Let the cracks speak not of your undoing, but of your becoming.