HOPE DEFERRED is a series about living with grief.

It is meant to explore the way that our grief doesn’t always arrive in grand gestures. More often, it appears as a thousand quiet interruptions throughout each day, showing up in the middle of ordinary moments.

The combination of birds and ordinary objects in these paintings depict how living with grief can feel like living in the quiet company of curious little birds, because after loss or change, grief and hope move through daily life in much the same way.

Grief settles beside you for a moment while you wash dishes, carry on a conversation, or reach for something familiar. It lands briefly near you while the outside world continues on unchanged. 

Yet sometimes it is Hope. Tentative, watchful, and easy to startle, it appears for a moment beside you before taking flight again.  

The collection title “Hope Deferred” acknowledges the liminal space of living between past hopes and the hesitant return of new ones. After loss or change, certainty rarely returns all at once. It arrives in brief and cautious visits in the transitional space while we are letting go of what was and still learning what will be.

-Jessalyn Claire

Chickadee and Lily

The Chickadee and Lily artworks are inspired by the experiences of pregnancy loss.

The Lily lives its life in the exact duration of its design. It is my reminder that everything has a season. I have learned how to hold grief gently through the practice of looking deeply at ephemeral things and finding beauty in impermanence. I have learned to hold my gifts with open hands, knowing the gift was always that they came, not in the length of their stay

Ephemeral Things

“In that season of waiting, I sat by the window

Watching lily stems make promises with unopened buds 

And time turned promises into flowers

Until the day the last blooms opened their faces.

Then I looked out to find the flowers 

had gently folded themselves away

bowing their heads in the darkness

as if they knew my heart was grieving 

Because my bloom had faded”