Lea K. Tawd is a mixed media artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. From the Self to the Collective, I paint women looking within, connecting to Source, to nature, and to each other. I paint a Utopian ideal of femininity. This is not an airbrushed magazine-model perfection. Rather, it is the piece of perfection that lays within each of us in all of our wonderful diversity.

For my card, when I saw the rain slicker I immediately thought about a child within, too small for her jacket. During this time sheltering at home, the world seems to be burning all around us. It often feels overwhelming, too big for any one person to process alone. But every forest fire is the beginning of a new forest. Old layers are burned away to reveal the new. I believe this is a time for intense growth, both personally and for the world as we are born anew.