“A Path Forward” Diptych is made up of two oil and acrylic paintings on gallery-wrapped canvas—one 24×24” and one 28×22”. I painted them after a trip to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens, inspired by a photo I took while wandering through. The way the flowers hung from the trees in the light—it just stopped me. I wanted to capture that feeling, that essence of everything being alive and quietly radiant.

There are layers of gold woven through the paint, along with abstract marks that feel like fragments of memory—fluid, vibrant, and a little dreamlike. I didn’t plan much going in. I just followed my intuition, letting the process unfold and allowing space for questions I’d never asked before.

This diptych is part of that unfolding—a reminder to trust the journey, even when there’s no clear destination.

These two paintings are a part of a larger series of 4 (two diptychs together) that you can view in the fourth slide. For more information on the other paintings, you can visit them here: https://braighlee.com/abstract-realism/the-hopeful-descent