Understory

My work is an act of attention. With acrylic and mixed media, I explore ecology through the lens of sensory experience and emotion. I am interested in intimate ways of knowing rooted in the felt experience of life intertwined. To translate this heightened awareness to the canvas, I use saturated color, softened focus, and expressive brushwork.

Where I live in the Pacific Northwest, I am drawn to that which dwells gracefully but is easily overlooked because of its scale or speed: the small, the slow, the very tall, the hard to find. Slugs, insects, dew drops, mosses, lichens, and fungi share my attention with the towering conifers and snags that define the region's landscape.

My paintings also pay homage to the ephemeral. A nurse log is both an ending and a beginning, the body of one tree becoming ground for others. Sunlight falls for only a moment, dew vanishes, and every organism grows and declines. Through these fleeting conditions, I explore impermanence. My hope is that viewers feel invited to slow down, to look closely at what they might otherwise pass by, and to experience their own sense of connection.