Beautiful Fall Foliage

*Trigger Warning: this statements contains a story on sexual assault.*

This painting explores the theme of connection and transformation with nature through a place marked by both trauma and reclamation. The work is based on a scale model Hixson built of the site where he was sexually abused, an environment he never returned to physically, but one that has lived vividly in his memory. By reconstructing it through art, Hixson created a way to confront, transform, and ultimately reclaim the space on his own terms.

The trees are rendered in hyper-detailed acrylic, intentionally heightened to provoke the sense of anxiety that once dominated the landscape. During the assault, he fixed his gaze out a window onto the fall foliage, clinging to the colors and shapes of nature in order to survive the overwhelming pain and fear. That forced, desperate attention to beauty became both a refuge and a fracture, an involuntary connection to nature that held him in the moment, even as everything else felt unbearable.

In this painting, the waves signal an oncoming storm. They foreshadow the collapse that followed: years of self-medication, spiraling away from himself and the natural world he had once found solace in. Yet this storm also reflects a necessary upheaval, the difficult path that eventually brought him to sobriety.

It was only in sobriety that Hixson could reconnect with nature in a genuine, life-affirming way. Through painting this remembered place, he transformed it: no longer a site of harm, but a landscape he now can navigate with clarity, control, and renewed appreciation. The work becomes a testament to survival, to the enduring power of the natural world, and to the possibility of reclaiming spaces, internal and external, through the act of creation.