One of the more inspiring things about life is its ability to bounce back. When we get knocked down, we get back up. When a fire burns through the land, new life sprouts from the ashes. We regrow. We rebuild. We reinvent ourselves when failure inevitably comes knocking.

This particular painting is of course, of a phoenix, emerging again from the ashes in an explosion of fire. It symbolizes, for me, reinvention, adaptation, and new beginnings. It was painted for a friend, whose son’s name is an alternate spelling of the same word:phoenix. He’s probably the closest thing I’ve known to a kid of my own, and I miss him and his family dearly!