The luna moth came first. They only live for about a week, just long enough to find a mate, and they never eat. There is something almost unbearably tender about that, a creature built entirely for one brief, luminous purpose. I wanted to paint it the way you might remember a dream, glowing and a little unreal, beneath a sky full of stars and a thin crescent moon.

The bee and the serpent found their way in as I worked. They are old symbols, the kind that show up across so many cultures that they start to feel like a shared memory. For me they speak to intuition and to the quiet knowing that guides you when reason runs out. I placed them like emblems on an altar, watching over the moth.

The cathedral frame gave the whole thing its shape. Something about that arched, devotional form felt right for a piece about transformation and spiritual guidance. It is small, but I wanted it to feel like a little shrine you could hold, a keeper of the evening and everything that comes alive once the light goes down.