Psalm 42 opens with a deer desperate for water. A few verses later, the writer is underwater, overwhelmed by the very thing he was looking for, and still reaching for God. I've always thought that was one of the most honest lines in the Bible, and it's where this piece started.

I wanted the whole surface to feel like looking down into deep water. The blues are laid in steps, from a dark cobalt down through indigo and sky blue to almost white, so the color shifts as the shape of the deer turns. Black lines hold the pattern in place, and the gold beads catch the light as you walk past. I put flowers at the forehead, the ears, and the chest. Those are the places where things slow down a little. Everywhere else, the pattern keeps moving.

There are about 300,000 beads on this deer, and every one of them was placed by hand. It took more than 600 hours. When you spend that long on something, it stops being a project and turns into a habit, sitting down every day and picking up where you left off. In a way, that's what the psalm is about too.