This painting began the moment I pressed play on the audiobook of Braiding Sweetgrass and picked up a brush.
I started with a blank canvas and no idea what I was going to paint. I thought the book might be something like the old Foxfire books about living off the land. Instead, as the stories unfolded — including the creation story of Turtle Island — the painting slowly began to take shape.
A reclining dreamer appeared.
Her braids drift through the water like currents, carrying the movement of the painting across the canvas. Around her, the dream fills with sea life — fish moving through open water, shells and reefs, and above them a dark celestial planet holding Turtle Island itself, a world suspended in space.
At one point a snake appeared in the painting and honestly scared me. Instead of painting it out, I placed it inside an unbreakable glass globe. The snake remained there, alive but contained, ready but unable to strike… and the dream felt like it could continue again.
As the painting evolved, the snake slowly changed form and became an eel — something that belonged naturally in the watery world the dreamer was creating.
By the time the painting was finished, it felt less like something I planned and more like something that arrived while I was paying attention. The dreamer rests to the sound of the sea from a conch shell, while her braids move with the currents and the ocean creatures drift through the dream of Turtle Island.
