“What is Taken, What is Given,” oil on canvas /36×72/ 2025

This painting grieves the quiet death of childhood and the moment innocence begins to slip beyond reach. In a dark, enchanted wood, a young girl sits cradling a dead unicorn, her gaze cast forward yet lost somewhere far beyond the world before her. She is suspended in that fragile threshold where wonder still lives, but can no longer remain untouched. Behind her, another unicorn turns away in tears, mourning not only its fallen companion, but the loss of the girl’s once-magical inner world. The painting reflects on the sorrow of growing older: how the knowledge that carries us forward can also feel like a theft, and how leaving behind a sacred way of seeing can feel like betraying the child we once were. It is a meditation on what must be surrendered in order to become, and on the quiet ache of knowing that some forms of magic do not leave us gently.