There are paintings that begin with an image, and others that begin with something you’ve been trying to say for years.
“Come What May” began with the latter.
I’ve made many attempts over the years to turn my feelings about parenting into something visual. It’s a subject I keep returning to, probably because it keeps changing. As our children grow, so does our role in their lives and so does our understanding of what it means to protect them.
In this painting, my daughter Teya stands in the darkness, holding a lantern. In front of her is a jaguar.
They are face to face.
The jaguar isn’t attacking. Teya isn’t running. There is simply this moment between them: something powerful and unknown standing before her, and a young girl standing her ground.
I wanted to paint my belief in Teya and, in many ways, my belief in all the young girls of her generation.
Teya moves through the world with a kind heart and a determined spirit. She thinks of others, chases her passions, works hard, and somehow does it all with an easy smile and a sense of humor. Like every parent, I want to protect her from whatever might be waiting in the darkness.
But I think one of the harder realizations of parenting is that protection isn’t really the job.
At least, not forever.
The job is to help our children discover within themselves that they already possess what they’ll need when they eventually have to face the world on their own.
That’s what the lantern became for me.
It isn’t a light being held over Teya by a parent. It is in her hand.
She carries it.
And the jaguar became everything we can’t predict or control: fear, uncertainty, loss, change, challenge...the things that will inevitably step out of the darkness and stand before the people we love.
Yesterday, the painting went to its forever home.
And something happened that made me see the painting a little differently.
Its new owner was profoundly moved by the piece. She shared that she had spent part of her childhood in foster care, and she connected deeply with the image of a young girl standing strong in the darkness.
Suddenly, the painting had a story beyond mine.
I had painted it from the perspective of a father looking at his daughter and thinking about the future. She saw it through the eyes of someone who had once been that girl.
That is one of the things I love most about making art.
You can spend hundreds of hours creating a painting and know exactly what every element means to you. You can build a story into every gesture, every expression, every bit of light. And then one day someone stands in front of it carrying an entire lifetime you know nothing about, and the painting becomes something else.
Maybe something bigger.
For me, Come What May will always be a painting about Teya. It is about my belief in her with everything I am. It is about knowing that I cannot walk every road ahead of her, remove every obstacle, or keep every jaguar hidden safely in the trees.
Nor should I.
I can only help her recognize the light she already carries.
And now, knowing where this painting has gone and the life experiences of the person who connected with it, I think there is another meaning there too.
Sometimes the girl holding the lantern isn't preparing to become strong.
Sometimes she already is.
