Courtney Leigh Holder is a contemporary realism painter in Dallas. “Flannery’s View of the Woods,” is apart of a 7-portrait series of women writers exploring how violence and a longing for connection in both nature and human relationships is a catalyst to an awakening. Amidst the current pandemic, this series is relevant as we try to understand what’s happening and look for ways to engage the future. This portrait of Flannery O'Connor, a collector of oddities and visionary, includes symbols of violence she used as a the catalyst for grace, and agents of change -- the bull that gorges and kills, and the fire that both destroys the wood and references the divine. The tattoo man both destructively seeks human connection with the lure of apples, then rejects it. In these uncertain times, Holder wants this series to engage the local community as she explores how nature and a desire for human connection mirror one another, and the part violence and dystopia play to wake us up to reality.