Footsteps
13 in x 21 in
each, 9/2026
I got the idea for Footsteps one night when I woke up and started thinking about painting something new. I settled on a four-panel set of identical canvases, all similarly gridded for background, but having organic shapes of different color themes laid down and crossing 1.5 inch borders between canvases. My mom said it reminded her of footsteps, so that’s how it got its name.
Rather than depicting literal walking, the painting evokes the accumulated presence of many travelers. Distinct shapes, unique color families, intersecting directions, and vivid identities move across a shared background. Each “footprint” reads as a distinct person or passage, while the dark, horizontally built background made up of different brown hues suggests a common terrain of lived experience: layered, weathered, and full of prior movement. Each of us leaves a footprint behind, and then we become part of a broader experience that invites others to pass through.
The divisions between panels operate almost like streets, corridors, or a map’s coordinate lines; they separate the composition while also encouraging the viewer to connect footprints across boundaries - movement continues despite interruption. Within every footprint, short horizontal strips create a mosaic-like or textile-like surface, contrasting with the organic silhouette of the foot. Each footprint is organic in feel. Internal bands are constructed, measured, and patterned, but each is different in shape. That tension gives the forms both individuality and structure, as though each person is made from accumulated fragments—memories, experiences, affiliations, or stories. The dark background is not intended to read as empty negative space; rather, it is layered and inhabited. Colors distinguish one footprint from another without creating a hierarchy: each is vivid, visible, and equally allowed to occupy space.
Varying the footprints in scale, direction, and placement gives the impression of normal rhythms of a journey - arrivals, departures, crossings, and pauses. There is a world beyond the image, suggesting that journeys began before the painting and will continue after it. Footprints appear to move independently, suggesting that our collective movements are democratic - no one route dominates. The bright palette of the footprints feels optimistic, but the dark background and fragmented construction suggest that movement through the world can be joyful, but it also leaves marks and is constricted by systems, borders, histories, and shared spaces. Footsteps transforms the universal symbol of movement into a vibrant meditation on shared presence, individual identity, and collective passage.
