Visiting Old Friends

30 X 22 inches

Watercolor

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Visiting Old Friends is a painting about returning, remembering, and learning to live alongside absence.

A lone samurai walks beneath cherry blossoms toward a shrine he has known before. He is going to visit old friends—but they are no longer there. What remains are the place, his memories, and the quiet ritual of returning to those who once walked beside him.

Above him, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom. Their beauty is deliberately at odds with the loss at the heart of the painting. They bloom brilliantly and then disappear, only to return with another spring. For me, they became a symbol of the fragile nature of life, but also of regeneration—the idea that grief and beauty do not have to exist separately.

The samurai continues forward rather than looking back. He carries the memory of those he has lost, while the world around him begins again.

This painting is very close to my heart. At its core, Visiting Old Friends is not really about a samurai or a shrine. It is about the people we lose, the places that continue to hold them for us, and the strange, beautiful way life keeps moving forward even when someone we love no longer can.