The door in this painting comes from a mid-19th century farmhouse in the Grassy Creek community of Grayson County, Virginia — the kind of home that one of the characters in the Serpentine Chain book lives in. When I first saw the door, with its worn edges, its warm wood (with the same shellac my grandma painted all the doors in her house with) I knew it belonged in the series of paintings that will go into the Serpentine Chain coffee table book with New York Times best-selling author, Sharyn McCrumb.

Perched on the antique brass doorknob is a sparrow, a little visitor who feels like she keeps secrets. The doorknob itself was an adventure to paint with oil glazes over a layer of gold leaf. It's tricky to let just enough of that warmth shine through to create a trompe l’oeil effect that almost fools the eye into believing it’s real metal catching the light.

This painting feels like a threshold — between centuries, between fiction and history, between the wildness of nature and the shelter of home. Every scrape and scuff on the wood tells a story.