When I moved to Western North Carolina, I lacked the space to work with and store traditional art materials - but I had an iPad. I quickly fell in love with the process of drawing and painting on this sophisticated device. As the technology improves, it becomes possible to achieve works of greater complexity and higher craft. Rather than making the work of art simpler, working digitally provides a rich and enormous set of tools that must be mastered, at the same time giving the artist tools limited only imagination. We've only begun, as a creative community, to explore and understand what is now made possible the use of digital tools.
I began to realize, as I studied the works that I had produced, that I was expressing all the emotions that I had gone through with Helene: horror, awe, hopelessness, depression, and finally hope for new beginnings. For me the devastation was impossible to understand with my practical day-to-day mind, but my unconscious mind had a rich story to tell. When I began to explore my interior landscape, I was amazed what I intuitively understand about the world - and myself. When we confront the inevitable fact of our eventual mortality - embrace it even - we need not fear it. Rather, we can use it as an ally for living in the present and discovering what really matters to us.
-- Ash Braley