Meditations for the Five Senses

This project, completed in September 2025, was commissioned by the Duke University Wellness Center to offer a multisensory experience that supports mindfulness, presence, and emotional well-being. The original paintings - each one inspired by one of the five senses: Sound, Smell, Taste, Touch, and Sight - are permanently on display at the Wellness Center.

Welcome to a multi-sensory experience rooted in stillness and wonder.

Each painting invites you to slow down and enter the world through one of the five senses. These meditations are not about effort or achievement, but about presence. Let your awareness soften. Let your breath guide you inward. There is nothing to fix - only something to feel.

Touch Meditation

Breathing in, feel yourself arrive in the body. Breathing out, soften into this moment of contact with the world.

You are standing in front of a landscape of sculpted stone and resilient plants—a living tapestry of textures shaped by sun, wind, and time. Before you, rocks rise in layered formations—some jagged and fractured, others worn smooth, their surfaces polished by the elements. At their base, a cactus sits quietly, its ribs tight with strength and water. Nearby, an agave’s thick, tapered leaves unfold, edged with delicate thorns. To one side, the velvety softness of Lamb’s Ear beckons your touch, while overhead, slender palm blades stretch outward in sharp, radiant lines.

Let your awareness trace the feel of each form—the grit of stone under your palm, the firm skin of succulent leaves, the contrast of gentle and guarded, soft and severe.

Breathing in, awaken your senses. Breathing out, relax into the richness of contact. You are alive to the world—and the world meets you in return.