This piece began as a commission for my cousin Caitlin, created not long after Hallow of Inertia. She asked for “a giant curvy woman covered in natural forest,” but as the image took shape, she transformed into something larger than the request. An archetype, a force, a woman who exists somewhere between earth and eternity. Only now do I have the words for what I was painting. She is neither fully goddess nor fully human, but a merging of both; a descendant of Hera, the ancient matriarch of power, protection, and the unapologetic complexity of womanhood. Her body is expansive and commanding, rejecting the smallness women are so often asked to shrink into. In her curves, I wanted to capture the sovereignty of the female form: the authority of softness, the strength that resides in nurturing, the defiance of simply taking up space. Yet her human qualities remain visible. Mortality and vulnerability, the quiet truths lived by real women. That tension between divinity and flesh makes her more than an ideal; it makes her a reflection of every woman who has had to hold power in one hand and pain in the other. The natural world does not adorn her, it claims her. Leaves, branches, and vines entwine with her body as if she is both mother and daughter of the forest. She is not placed in nature; she is nature. This merging speaks to a deeper feminist theme: that women’s bodies are landscapes of creation, capable of holding worlds, stories, and histories, even when society tries to prune us down to something smaller.