I walk and I watch humans and how we mark the natural environment.  Through paintings and drawings, I attempt to understand the forces of chaos and order within this dynamic relationship.  The natural world craves human intervention and support as urgently as we humans thirst for moments in nature.  

 

Yet the subtle simplicity of the possible in this balance is almost always a victim of the current wars for our attention.  I make work with detail and abstraction that showcases the beauty and possibility of this situation.  I make work to find that space, that moment in this relationship that gives me hope.

 

I have always been a naturalist, an artist, a gardener, a witness but I began dedicating myself to the pours and pools, shapes and forms layering in my mind when my life was overtaken by the strange rhythms of parenthood.  Nature, color, making things became more urgent, as did the need to process what I could not articulate, in a grasping effort to make sense of the evolving world my children were entering.

 

My work is influenced first by daily walks out my front door and around Texas and the formal teachings of texture, perspective, color, layers and rhythm nurtured outdoors.  I follow landscape architects and naturalists like Piet Oudolf, Thomas Ranier and Doug Tallamy as closely as favorite painters like Julie Mehretu, Darren Waterston and Angela Fraleigh. 

 

These pieces remind viewers of the vital beauty of a reciprocal relationship with nature while documenting our awkward yet critical situation as a place of hope.