Balancing Cairn Lines is a series of painting collages that reimagine traditional cairn piles – stacked stone markers found on migration paths and wilderness trails – as symbols of human movement, adaptation, and memory. These stones are created from discarded or unfinished paintings with the intention to create forms that provide a redefined balance of shape and color. These painterly stones become layered embodiments of artistic reflection, cultural displacement, and the act of finding balance in the continual moments of transition throughout one´s life.

The cairn, historically used to mark paths, graves, or boundaries becomes a metaphor for migration and navigation, representing cultural assemblage and adaptation. The focus on balance represents the continual transition between origins and destinations. The use of discarded materials speaks to resilience, reinvention and the capacity to transform what is discarded into something guiding. Representing cairn stones with paintings merges the act of creation with the act of journeying, implying that our identities are always transforming depending on our environment.

These collages also presonally represent the childhood relationship I have with stacking stones in the creeks of Missouri. They are a practice of meditation on how forms can find harmony without losing identity. Their balance invites reflection on how we can coexist, supporting one another, and creating harmony without uniformity. The viewer is invited into a meditative space aware of human relationships based on interconnectivity and cross-cultural understandings. Balancing Cairn Lines are invitations to reflect on what it means to hold difference without losing balance.