What We Carry Into Spring

*What We Carry Into Spring* depicts a solitary figure with bowed head, standing above a vast landscape beneath a golden sky. A flowering tree appears to grow from—or be carried upon—the figure’s back. Its exposed roots merge with a dark, trailing garment, while vivid red-orange blossoms spread overhead. The low sun illuminates the distance, setting the figure’s inward posture against an expansive, luminous world.

The central image suggests that renewal comes with the weight of what precedes it. The roots can represent memory, grief, ancestry, or attachment: things that sustain us even as they burden us. The blossoms complicate that weight, making it a source of beauty and continuing life. The bowed head leaves the emotional reading open, somewhere between exhaustion, reflection, and quiet resolve. Read alongside the title, the painting suggests that entering a new season does not require leaving the past behind.

Visually, the work combines a recognizable figure and landscape with a surreal fusion of body and tree. The surface has an **impasto-like appearance**, with broad, broken passages resembling thick paint applied by brush and palette knife; the image alone cannot establish the actual medium. Fine, wiry roots and branches contrast with the larger, angular marks in the clouds and terrain, giving the central form intricate definition within a loosely rendered setting.

The composition balances the dense, dark figure and flowering canopy on the left with open sky and sunlight on the right. Sweeping diagonals in the garment, roots, and trunk carry the eye upward toward the blossoms, while the bright horizon draws it outward. Charcoal and deep blue establish weight; ochre and gold supply warmth; concentrated vermilion gives the blossoms their intensity. Together, these choices make the painting feel simultaneously heavy and hopeful—rooted in hardship, yet visibly alive.