Draws on Chinese Daoist philosophy and figures from the Shanhaijing (Classic of Mountains and Seas) to explore non-Western, relational ways of being between humans, nonhuman life, and the environment. Associated with the figure “Jumang” and the season of spring, this painting depicts growth as a crowded beginning, where sky presses into land and air thickens into vegetation. Life emerges through competition and proximity, as beings negotiate space and direction. In a Daoist sense, vitality arises from entanglement rather than balance.