Heat rises from the swamp as if remembering the first exhalation of the universe.
Water shivers, mud thickens, vapors drift upward—in the humid morning fog, nothing holds its shape for long.
Everything here breathes: the reeds, the shadows, the long white pine trees, the oaks —with their moss dangling in the mist.
The silence seems alive, full of movement too ancient for names.
In each layer of pigment, an old world surfaces—echoes of clay wombs from Paleolithic hands,
the long memory of Mother Earth turning over in her sleep, the pulse of stars cooling into stone and stone dissolving back into light.
Breath rises and falls, sky becoming water, water becoming heat,
and the painting becomes the threshold where all these transformations meet.
For a moment, the viewer is not outside looking in.
They are inside the vast respiration of the world—a small chamber of the cosmic lung,
inhaling the deep-time wisdom of earth and exhaling the bright astonishment of being alive.
Here, the universe breathes through us, and we breathe it back into form.
Art by Kate W 