The stories we tell are powerful—to others, to ourselves, and especially to the young. Like all things with power, they can build and create, or they can wound.

Fear can protect. “Don’t touch the stove; you’ll get burned” is both useful and true. But fear can also become dangerously counterproductive when it shapes how we understand ourselves, one another, or the world.

Angels and Demons is a meditation—as much of my work is—on my own inner wrestle and outward questioning of the use of fear to guide our children. An innocent child stands before a highly violent biblical narrative as the scales of the dragon begin to emerge into her reality: something distant, yet intrusive; imagined, yet increasingly present.

I often draw from the imagery of art history—in this case, a Byzantine fresco from Meteora, Greece—and juxtapose it with contemporary figures and concerns. That merging of past and present speaks to the timelessness of the questions humans continue to wrestle with, and to the stories we inherit, retell, and pass on.