Can death be beautiful? What does this idea mean to you?

Nine years ago, as a newly single mother, I sat through a Hospice training that included a guided meditation on our own death. It absolutely tore me apart me to think of the possibility of leaving my small child behind! Subsequent years have led to multiple experiences that have built on that first confrontation with my mortality - from formal studies to earth-based experiences and many attempts to live deeply into the life, death, life cycle of the natural year. I have made deliberate life-choices based on what I'll be most pleased with reflecting back on, on my death bed.

You can’t separate life from death. One feeds the other. In a very literal sense, our own deaths and burials are meant to compost to feed new plant life.

Annually, we live through a life, death, life cycle - especially if we live in a geographical region with 4 seasons. The abundant harvest and blooms of summer give way to autumn, the season of death. Leaves go out in a blaze of glory, their dying forms feeding new life on the forest floor. Plants die back, spilling seeds - the embryos of new life - to the ground in the process of their dying. Their dead leaves shelter the seeds, composting into organic fertilizer to feed the new shoots. Plants, maybe animals too, die to give us nourishment and to sustain our lives through the cold winter months ahead. In spring, all of the world bursts alive again in sweet rebirth.

Utilizing fine art landscapes, this body of work explores mortality using autumn death as a narrative metaphor to illustrate the potential beauty of death… Examine your own fears... is there room for a good death? A hopeful death? Can death be beautiful? What does this idea mean to you?