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When traveling, I’m always engaged by old walls: their weathered surfaces, the random marks of passersby, the layers of disintegrating color. Like a mysterious palimpsest, they have an earned patina that speaks a narrative history of time, revealing presence and suggesting absence. My approach to painting incorporates the building of a surface in a similar manner with additions and erosions, intuitive mark, and asemic writing.  I’ve taken these photos in many parts of the world. Even when I can’t speak the language, I feel instinctually that I understand something communicated in these surfaces.

Some of the most formative experiences occur during travel with my husband David and friends. Many places we visit are difficult to reach so we often get around on motorcycle. I am the pillion. The people we meet, the encounters with culture, the offerings of each experience, have profoundly changed my life and impacted my artwork. As a tourist I don’t pretend to understand all of this, but I am very grateful to have the gift of interaction with people we meet and to feel a profound interconnection with the world at large.

I live on an island surrounded by the tidal waters of Puget Sound. Most of my younger life was on the move between cities and states scattered all across the US, but here is my homecoming. From my small island I daily view an even smaller island inhabited only by wildlife. This is the fixed point of my compass, the intersection of the sea and sky. In its constantly changing moodiness, its stillness, serenity or storm-tossed unpredictability, this is a mystical scape that seeps deeply into my being.

I never tire of watching the seals gather on the sand spit or popping up around my kayak like curious alien whack-a-moles. I know the seasonal calls of returning seabirds and throw my arms out like wings with the passing eagles. I’m rather obsessed with photographing this little island with its moody tides and weather, its veils of light and numinous colors. I’ve taken hundreds of photos of this singular place and intend to go on and on – each day to be its grateful viewer.

The garden is one of my greatest teachers, a place of contemplation and inspiration. The photos below are growing things on the walk up to the studio at different times of the year. The artist who sculpted the lovely travertine torso is M.J. Anderson, a new addition to the garden in 2022. The energy of the earth is an unbelievable force in the Pacific Northwest. Vegetation grows all year long – it’s hard to keep up with all that expansion – but what beauty!