If the Safety Net is not

I kept coming back to this idea that we’ve mapped safety all wrong. We see the net as the thing you grab when everything else fails—when you’re already falling. But what if the net is there first? What if it’s the thing that lets you step into territory that looks impossible to cross?

The digital medium felt necessary because the image itself is a kind of taut surface—rendered with precision but fundamentally weightless. I wanted that tension between something that looks solid and something that could disappear. The fog and the rising light below are doing something I’m still not sure I can explain: they’re not threatening, they’re not comforting, they’re just present. Like permission doesn’t need to announce itself.

I painted the figure barefoot because I wanted the detail of contact—not grasping, not bracing, just standing. The bare soles on something taut. Whether that counts as safety or something else entirely, I’m still not sure. But the piece isn’t asking you to decide. It’s asking you to notice you’re already walking.