All my senses are alive to a reward: our mysterious, cross-pollinating and vibrant world.  In painting a strip of slimy seaweed, I muse on its watery home, in depths I cannot see.  Filtered through my imagination onto paper, it presents another dimension:  now the languorous form might also evoke a constellation in the sky, or a tree trunk.

This reverence for discovery and interconnectedness feeds my art. The push and pull among what things are, where they come from, and where they’re going.  In one series, I paint the roots of legumes that draw bacteria from the air, fix it in nodules, and then - when they decompose - release nitrogen back into the earth. It’s inspiring and hopeful that nature has the creativity to figure it all out. Witness how many myths and superstitions are associated with trees, plants, flowers, even the weather itself.   Art is my way to experience the thrill and peace in this evolving symbiotic exchange.

My own roots are enriched by fertile artistic traditions, from the delicate accuracy of Victorian women’s watercolors; to organic modern abstraction; to grand, plein-air landscapes. The French expression plein-air literally means “open air.” Notably, however, the word “plein” can also mean “full,” and is even slang for “pregnant.”  In all senses, the open air of the natural world pollinates my work.

Rummaging in what could be nature’s recycling heap in the American West, on the beaches of Venice, and in the mountains of Colorado where I live, I find treasures instead.   When I paint a seed pod, it’s not just for its beauty, but for the metaphor of its essential energy.  They grow from dormant and vulnerable pods, until - ripe with potential - they literally explode.  Their insides will out: seeds carried by the wind or animals to be the core of new life. The cycle renews, in soil fed by the husks of what came before.  If plants had voices, imagine the music they would make!  I “listen” to these reverberations in each piece: the ebb and flow of waves, the seasons and the loop of orbits.