Artist: Abigail Palmer
Title: Running Wilde
Medium: Original Oil on panel
Size: 30 x 40 in.
Artist Statement: 
Running Wild is a continuation of my fascination with how we remake ourselves. The title serves as a reminder of the beautiful and heart-wrenching chaos that can unfold in the making or remaking of a life.
 
This piece, originally finished and named We Go Better Together, came home, and I saw a new avenue for it. It wasn't flipped upside down or turned on its side, as other pieces have been. Instead, I glazed it with a translucent blue wash, a deliberate veil that softened edges and unified tones. In this stage of my life, blue has come to represent a calm, steady presence: still holding energy, like the blue sky or ocean water lapping rhythmically and consistently at the shore, reassuring rather than overwhelming.
 
Inspired by the women in Hannah's Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, who speak of dying to an old self to receive an expanded creation, the painting embodies this transformation, not erasure, but glorious alchemy. The underlying blue wash lingers subtly, a reminder of what was yielded. The remade surface glows with purpose, intensity, and strength, showing how sovereign surrender births a truer, fulfilled self as co-creator with God.