A Light In The Wasteland is a series of stone lithographs in colors that form a story about me living alone in a golden city at the heart of a large desert. It is in two parts, the first being printed from various broken stones, and the second from a single stone that I used over and over again for every piece. In the story, my city is besieged by a monster of fire which I am forced to fight and ultimately destroy. At the same time, a group of wanderers from the desert sneak in and become embroiled in the battle. Ultimately only one survives. After my altercation with the monster, many spirits leave its body, and I realize that it was a creature created by manipulating the souls of many people in the wasteland who I had been keeping out of my city. I return home to find the unconscious body of the wanderer, and I decide to build a place for them and let them stay.

This story represents the way that I have worked to build self love and heal the damage caused by self hatred. There is a part of me that, despite anything I do or achieve, still looks at me with a negative view of myself I internalized when I was young. At times this part of me has appeared with great destructive force, and in the past it has become overpowering. However, in recent years, I have come to understand that this part of myself is less like a horrible monster to be fought and kept out, and more like my traumatized and unacknowledged inner child. I created this narrative in an intuitive way, like a daydream. By allowing my daydreaming to guide my imagery and my story, I allow my inner child to play and invite it to collaborate, giving it a path to acceptance that it never had before. My goal for this work is that it will speak to these things through symbols, creating a story that finds its way into the imaginations of others and leading them to look at the darker parts of themselves in a new way