In my second National Geographic series I was again drawn to slices of everyday life but I wanted to emphasize the kind of happiness that can only come living through hard times. Pure joy can only be felt when we’ve experienced its opposite.

As I was beginning this series, my dad—who was also an artist—gave me one of his old paintings from art school. It was from his senior show entitled “JoyBringers” showcasing impressionistic renditions of advertisements from an old Sears catalogs. I’d never known the origins of this painting that hung in our house my whole life and I was immediately struck by the irony that all these years later I too was creating art inspired by old magazines.

My dad and I are very different people, but in my ongoing effort to connect and empathize, I wanted to name this series after his, in honor of the way an apple can’t fall too far from it’s tree.

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