I grow most of the subjects I paint in a small garden beneath the Wasatch Mountains. To tend something over seasons is a different kind of knowing than observation alone. It changes the way you see.

My subjects are botanical, but what draws me is how the natural world, when looked at long enough, begins to reflect our own cycles — of opening and letting go, of reaching and of rest. The way a stem arches under its own weight or moves toward the light by rotating on its axis. A bud that bursts wildly into bloom, or petals that curl inward with something that looks, unmistakably, like self-protection. There is beauty, too, in the falling apart — flowers loosening their petals, a leaf gone dry and translucent at the edges. Painting is a way staying open to these gestures. Perhaps this is projection — but I think this is about kinship. We are woven from the same world, and we recognize each other.

I work in the indirect method of classical oil painting, building each image in multiple, transparent layers. I live with my paintings as they dry — sometimes weeks between painting sessions. In that time, the work becomes a living participant in the process, speaking back, shifting, revealing things I didn’t see coming. The conversation between subject, painting, and painter leaves me endlessly surprised. The process is always an adventure.

We are not separate from the natural world. My work is an attempt to make that felt rather than merely known — and to invite the viewer into the same quality of attention: unhurried, open, and willing to be changed by what they find.