Mia Lucero’s beautifully painted oil portraits of animals and people exemplify her respect for the natural world while exploring the relationships between the land and the creatures who populate it. Although she has long found inspiration from the four-legged residents of her Pittsboro farm, Lucero is shifting the way she approaches her subjects and their environments, blurring the lines between the animals and their surroundings. She writes, “I’ve been finding so much joy in noticing the continuity between the earth and its inhabitants. Watching the sheep on our farm, I see them so inextricably linked with the land. They eat, breathe, sleep, and
fertilize the earth, returning the nutrients they borrowed, living harmoniously with other creatures, fully at home and fully at peace.”