After the Storm

There’s a quiet power in the way a painting remembers. This painting, titled “After the Storm”, captures a moment years after a rare tornado passed through the Limberlost area. The destruction it left behind was eventually cleared—the fallen trees removed, the road made passable once more—but the landscape had changed.

For over forty years, we traveled this road, always surrounded by a thick tunnel of trees, sheltered and familiar. Then one day, as we returned from a trip, we were met with something unexpected: a far-reaching view that hadn’t been visible before. The forest had opened its hand to reveal a sweeping vista of hills.

Now, lit in the soft golds and reds of late autumn, a morning mist rising, nature even in recovery, offered a new kind of beauty—one born not in spite of the storm, but because of it.

This piece is a reflection of that unexpected transformation, and the realization that it will soon disappear again.