When Malia Jensen shared with me a formative animal encounter, I was transported to the artist’s childhood home, between the mountains and the sea, in rural Oregon. The scene is dreamlike: A quiet meadow sloping towards a creek. Alongside it, a dense mixture of fir trees and conifers climb the hillside, a place where Malia spent much of her time. On her way into the woods she’d visit a crabapple tree at the edge of her path. Amid the tall grass still studded in beads of dew, she’d find the outlines of recently sleeping deer, who had just been there, their forms still imprinted in the damp grass, encircling the trunk.