Her face turns straight up to the sky, eyes closed, lips softly parted, arms folded around herself as if holding on to the last of something before she lets it go. Monarch Rising is a painting about that release: the moment a person stops bracing and begins, quite literally, to rise. Rendered in velvety greys, her body is both strong and tender, the shoulders broad and open, the embrace low and protective.

Above her, her hair climbs into a great rounded storm of gold, teal, peach and blush, laced with dark streaks and tiny drops of color, and threaded all through with small hand-painted flowers in lilac, pink and white. It reads as hair and as sky at once, a halo of thought, feeling and memory opening outward without end. Touches of metallic pigment and sparkle catch the light, so the whole cloud seems to glimmer as you move.

Then there are the butterflies. Seven monarchs, their wings burning orange and gold, gather over her chest and shoulders and lift away into the air, as though they are leaving her body in the very instant she lets go. This is where the painting finds its title and its tenderness: change shown not as something that happens to her, but as something rising out of her. Just over three feet tall, it is an intimate, glowing work, made to be lived with up close.