My painting “Sticks Stones Roots, and Bones” belongs to a series titled "The Hands that Hold You" hold space for one another to process daily life. This painting features my mother in the front yard of her south Florida home, watering her garden. Her dogs busily run around her in the attempt to protect the house and alert her of any incoming danger while my mother remains unbothered. This scene is quiet and reads like that of a still genre scene if not for the deep pink filling the sky and saturated colors that read as “hot”. This theme of “heat” appears in several of my paintings as an indicator of external pressures and is reminiscent of blazing Florida sunsets. For me, this painting functions as a metaphor for protection; within my home, we process various emotions like any family, but I am moved by how we process these feelings and build practice around healing and discussion.