This piece was the first painting I created entirely on my own—away from school, away from guidance, away from the safe precision of paint-by-number. I didn’t understand it then, but this was the moment I stepped into my own artistic voice, quietly and almost by accident. I painted it during a time when I was obsessed with Moonlight by XXXTentacion. It’s funny to admit, but the song’s dreamy, repitched bells felt like they were tugging at the edges of my imagination. I wanted to translate that sound into color. That’s how I found my way into the purples, tones that reminded me of moon jellyfish I adored as a child, creatures that glow softly in a world we can barely see. Purple itself feels like a secret, a wavelength just shy of ultraviolet, a color that shouldn’t exist and yet insists on being seen. In the painting, the girl cradles the moon as if it is both her burden and her guardian. She holds the night close, resting against it like someone exhausted who has finally found something gentle enough to lean on. I made this work during a dark chapter in my life. My parents were separating, and I was drifting through my own sense of self, awake until four in the morning with nothing but the glow of my phone and the quiet hum of thoughts that never settled. In those sleepless hours, the moon felt like my only steady companion; humble, patient, distant, yet somehow listening. This painting is a memory of that time: a conversation with the night, a small sanctuary built from sound, color, and the longing to feel held.