There are encounters you don’t seek — they find you. A sudden stillness. The sense of being watched. Not by a person, but by something older than language. Wilder. This antlered being appeared in my work the way it might appear in the forest — without sound, without warning, with a gaze that asks nothing, yet says everything. It stirred something quiet in me. Wonder, maybe. Or the feeling that a veil briefly lifted between worlds — and I was allowed to look through. I didn’t paint it as a symbol or a story. I painted it as an echo of that single moment: when time stands still, and something that has always been there looks back at you. My work is not a destination. It’s a doorway.