TEMPERANCE/Tabletop

Table Top

BRONZE  12” x 5” x 5” |  Edition of 50

In Temperance, I wanted to explore the idea that grace does not come from perfection. It comes from endurance. The angel I created is not untouched by life. It has passed through fire and silence, through the difficult passages that shape both creation and collapse. I have always felt that compassion is not effortless; it is something earned through experience. This figure stands in the fragile space between opposing forces: suffering and compassion, fragility and strength, shadow and light. In that narrow threshold, something remarkable happens. Balance emerges. Not the absence of hardship, but the ability to hold what is broken and what is beautiful at the same time. For me, the angel is not distant from the human condition. It carries it. It knows what it means to endure and still extend protection into the world. When I look at Temperance, I am reminded of a simple truth that continues to reveal itself in both life and art:

Grace is what survives the fire.

— Gesso Cocteau