The forest floor teaches what it means to grow sharp. The crunch of leaves, distant cicadas, that thick smell of botanical life and death. The way sun filters through treetops, giving and taking warmth like hugs from the sky, there and gone and there again as branches moved. This painting emerged from that space. Teeth push through the undergrowth as organic protection, something learned from the forest floor. The face reflects this strange duality: being a child while never actually having been one.