If you’ve known me for a while, you know I’m a lifelong swimmer. Water has always been where I feel most myself. It’s one of the things I love most about living in Arizona—I can swim outdoors nearly every day of the year.

And yet, in Arizona, water is never taken for granted.

In the desert, water exists underground, behind dams, inside pipes—present but withheld. You become aware of its absence before you experience its presence. It teaches you that some things sustain us even when we can’t see them.

This painting grew from that realization.

I grew up in Pittsburgh, surrounded by water—three rivers, rain-soaked springs, humid summers. Water was everywhere. Ordinary. I let the faucet run when I brushed my teeth and I rarely thought about it.

Only after living in the desert did I understand what abundance felt like.

The Waiting Water holds both landscapes within it: the abundance of where I came from and the scarcity of where I live now. It’s about how distance changes our understanding of place, and how we sometimes have to leave something behind before we recognize what it has given us.