The High Hill (work in progress); walnut ink, chlorophyll, rose madder, mayan blue, gamboge, nicosia green earth, glauconite, colorado pink pipe clay, fire earth, lemon yellow ochre, bright yellow ochre, titanium while, azurite, dioptase, riebeckite, gum arabic, honey, clove oil, graphite and china markers on oak laminate. 8x8 ft. March, 2017.

Eyes on a rotating head and in a moving body, connected to the memory-triggering mechanism of the brain, create portraits of place that are both intimate and spacious, where moments of intense scrutiny collide with sweeps of soft focus and even quiet gaps, piecing it all together to create emotional maps that evade photographic record. Significance and interest do not always overlap.

Buford Park is a protected area on the outskirts of Springfield, Oregon where doug firs overtake ancient oak savanna and the dreams of past cattle farmers are barbed wire woven with oso berry and carpets of moss. Wading through this duff, my eye seizes on the half-human, or the possibly-human, picking out animal shapes in the moss to a chorus of coyotes howling back at a distant siren in the city below.

Squirrels; cardboard, riebeckite, titanium white; 8" x 7", March 2017.

These are studies for a project which involves observing a specific  Western Grey Squirrel in a semi-wild urban area on the banks of the Willamette River in Eugene, Oregon. The area is one where winter storms have created many downed and split big-leaf maples and cottonwoods, providing the ideal bright and splintered surfaces on which to reproduce the image of the squirrel using vine black, zinc white and mayan blue (non-toxic natural pigments that dissolve easily). The pigments would be mixed with water alone (no binding glue) so that they would gradually be erased by the rainfall. The Western Grey Squirrel belongs to a threatened species which coexists with introduced Eastern Grey Squirrels. The distinctively blue-grey tails of the squirrels appear almost like plumes of smoke. Permission to render the squirrels on the downed trees has not yet been granted by the parks service.

Untitled, I & II; reclaimed wood, yellow ochre, titanium white, mayan blue (I), pink pipe clay, dioptase, gamboge (II), gum arabic, honey, clove oil. February 2017.

This series represents a search for a way to render other-than-human animals both as themselves and as we, humans, perceive them: vague, concealed, or misinterpreted. 

Untitled, III; reclaimed wood, hand-ground Oregon clay pigment, rose madder, and Egyptian blue, gum arabic, honey, & clove oil. February 2017..

(see Untitled i & II for full description)

Untitled IV: reclaimed wood, found earth pigments nicosia green earth, green umber, gum arabic, honey, clove oil. 9"' x 13", February, 2017.

(See Untitled I & II for full description)

Long-tailed Duck, No More Again; dead long-tailed duck, birch charcoal, southern shore of Lake Ontario, January 2015.

Found this duck dead on the snow banks by the stormy water and raced to the house to find some ash in the fireplace to render it on the grainy snow, my hands freezing.

Red Rock Leaves; scrub oak leaves, green nicosia earth, gamboge, yellow earth, mayan blue, titanium white, Sedona, Arizona. February 2015.

I painted these scrub oak leaves in a wash in the Arizona dessert where they had fallen, trusting that my marks would be erased by the rushing water of the sudden rains.