This piece grew out of thinking about the seer archetype — the figure who receives knowledge not through study but through dreams, omens, and quiet watching. I wanted the crown to come from nature rather than metal: bare winter branch and thorn instead of gold, because the kind of knowing this bird carries isn’t earned through conquest. It’s given.

The moth drifting past is a small, deliberate detail. It’s easy to miss on first look, but it carries the piece’s real weight — a reminder that transformation and loss sit closer together than we usually admit, and that watching over something doesn’t always mean controlling it.

The roses and wildflowers crowding the base were built up slowly, layer by layer, the same way the sky’s gold stars were added by hand after the base paint had fully cured. I wanted the whole scene to feel caught mid-breath — a moment of stillness under a sky that’s doing quite a lot of work.