12x12 Acrylic/ Canvas/ Glitter/ Resin. Ready to hang. 

When I was a teenager my Sister got me tickets to see Wicked with her for Christmas. The scene on stage, when they got to Oz, made time stand still. I think it was the first time ever for me that what I was feeling matched exactly what I was looking at. This was so overwhelming I burst into tears, but it’s one of the only moments of joy I can currently recall from those years of my life. When I finally cleaned up many years later, my mentor loved to compare me to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. In the beginning, I thought she considered me so stupid that I needed a childrens story to grasp life. It took years to internalize the metaphor that “home” and “magic” are the only things I find when I learn how to see myself, not everything I perceive as outside of me. Everything else is a side quest.

I got to Oz a long time ago - I found it in the sweat of the hot room, the discipline of my writing, the courage of my art, the viciousness of the silence, and the power of the ocean. But I’ll never forget the first time I ever saw Oz for real, and I thought it was outside of me. This painting is a portrait of the magic I still believe in, despite every single capitalist entity on this planet sending the message that I should be terrified of the sky I don’t yet see falling.