The Story Behind the Sands of Time Collection
The Sands of Time collection is a series of my Narrative works, figurative and story-driven paintings, all circling one quiet idea: how we carry time, how we spend it, and what we choose to hold onto along the way. At its center is Secrets of a Desert Dweller, a turtle crossing the desert with its shell opened like a lid, a whole town held safely inside. If you have ever wondered what ties these pieces together, that turtle is the shortest answer I can give you.
I have wanted to tell you the story behind this collection for a while, so pour something warm and stay a minute. These paintings came from a season when I was thinking a lot about what we carry and who we carry it for.
What is the Sands of Time collection about?
Sands of Time is about time itself, but told through the small, human weight of a life rather than through clocks or calendars. Every piece in it is a Narrative work, which for me means it is figurative and there is a story living inside it, something you can feel your way into even before you have words for it. The thread running through all of them is simple and a little tender: we are all carrying something, and the carrying is where the meaning is.
I did not set out to make a collection about time. It arrived the way the best work usually does, one painting pulling the next one out of me until I looked up and saw they belonged together.
Why a turtle carrying a town?
Secrets of a Desert Dweller is the piece I always come back to. The turtle moves slowly across the sand with its shell lifted open like a lid, and inside is a whole town: the rooftops, the streets, the whole shape of a life it has gathered and refused to set down. Everything it has ever carried is in there, and it just keeps walking.
I think that is most of us, honestly. We move at our own steady pace, and we carry the people and the places and the years, and we rarely stop to notice how much is tucked inside the shell. When I finished it, the feeling I was left with was not heaviness at all. It was a kind of renewed spirit, a wish to live a full life and to actually notice the time I have and the people standing in it. That is the feeling I most want to hand to you when you stand in front of it. Secrets of a Desert Dweller is available, and it is the doorway I would send you through first if you are meeting this collection for the first time.
What other paintings are in the collection?
A few pieces keep the turtle company, and each one holds the same thread from a different angle. Time Stand Still is a woman in a colorful dress, and she is exactly what her name promises, a moment you would give anything to keep from moving on. The Messenger is a donkey in a flower hat, and there is a gentle humor and a soft dignity in that one that makes people smile before they even know why.
Western Echoes has already found its collector and is acquired, which is its own kind of lovely, a piece from this story now living inside someone else's. You can see the collection together on the Sands of Time page, and I always think these paintings say more standing beside one another than any of them can say alone.
What feeling do I hope you leave with?
If Sands of Time does its job, you walk away a little more awake to your own life. Not lectured, not rushed, just quietly reminded that the time is passing either way, so we may as well live it fully and love the people we are carrying while they are here to be loved. That is the whole heart of it. A turtle, a town, and a nudge to notice.
If one of these pieces has stayed with you, or you simply want to hear more of the story behind it, I would be so glad to talk. My Collector's Circle door is always open, and the people inside it are the first to see new work and to hear where a story like this one goes next. Come sit with us. I would love to have you along.
Dani
