The 38-Year Seed: How a Snowy Owl Carried Me to Brooklyn

I began Open at Midnight in December of 2023, and worked on it over a two-year period, completing it late in 2025.  It emerged out of the misty layers on my canvas, traveling through many iterations before it arrived fully into form.  

For a while, I felt this Snowy Owl should be carrying some white irises - a powerful symbol of spiritual connection, sincerity, and grace. Ultimately, I decided to paint over the flowers to let the owl have complete freedom of movement without being tethered to any ideas. The owl could carry everything within itself. I hung it over our living room couch, where it is as I write this. And then something interesting happened.

 First layers and Iris sketch

The Visionary Art Collective was suggested to me by Claude Ai during one of our chats about art. It adds to my mixed feelings about Ai, because Claude told  me my art is “visionary” and that I should look for like-minded audiences. I looked up the VAC on Instagram, and the first thing that caught my attention was a call for art - for an exhibition titled The Midnight Garden, juried by Jessica Libor.  The deadline was two days away. I ended up completing the application in my airline seat on the way to North Carolina to visit my mom.

Soon after, Open at Midnight was accepted into the show. It feels like a magical and surreal culmination of this painting’s journey, and my own.

To give you a little back story:  the summer after I turned twenty-five, I was accepted into The Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, for a weeklong painting residency.  The work I did that week was exploratory, gritty, and bold - nothing like the subjects I was painting at the time.  I painted entirely from my inner life and subconscious, which would one day point me in the direction of the work I am doing today.

During a meeting that week, one of my mentors looked at my work and told me, “You should be in New York.”   

I didn’t believe in myself enough back then to take such a daring step. After all, I grew up in rural VT.  What the hell would someone like me do in New York? Besides, I was already married, owned a home, and I was working full-time in a dental laboratory. So that was that. I returned to my life with his words etched in my heart like a ghost I couldn’t forget.

Fast forward to today.  Open at Midnight is going to be showing at The Midnight Garden, in Brooklyn, New York. 

The coincidence of this seems a little uncanny. I am a completely different person now, and I can’t even remember my mentor’s name, but he planted a seed that took 38 years to sprout.  I’m finally going to be in New York with my work. While I know this gallery pop-up isn’t exactly what he meant back then, it feels like a profound, full-circle moment. The theme of this painting - a portal between the visible and invisible worlds - is a perfect metaphor for the unknown possibilities in life, even if the road is very long and winding. 

See the Painting Here

The Midnight Garden pop-up exhibition presented by the Visionary Art Collective

August 20-23

61 Atlantic Avenue (Warnes Contemporary gallery)

Brooklyn, New York

Opening reception - August 20, 6:00 - 8:00 PM