"The Interconnection of Puget and Skagit" oil painting will be in the live auction at the Museum of Northwest Art June 15th in LaConner, WA.
This is the first painting in my Luminous Nature (Puget Basin) series. It began as a
painting of a line of trees with sky between. If you look at the
painting sideways, you can see it resembles some of my earlier paintings
from my
Puget Tree Series (link) of watercolor paintings where the trees are lined up with equal spacing between each tree, as in the painting
Puget in the Trees (link).
At some point, I turned the painting sideways (horizontal to
vertical) and began visualizing the tree forms as farmland with bodies
of water in between them. My painting process can be somewhat complex. I
see the connections between things. While I am painting, objects in the
paintings shift form from one thing into another. It is my
interpretation of how I see the world.
Shapeshifting objects in my paintings can be seen throughout my body
of work over many years. Leaves and tree limbs become birds, humans
merge into tree forms or the other way around.
The vessel shape at the base of this painting, in the middle of a red
field, suggests it is filled with water, and perhaps sky in the midst
of a field of tulips. I see the forests, water and farmlands of the
Puget Sound and Skagit Valley as completely interconnected. One does not
exist without the other.
