Line and color. Plants and the ordinary. These impulses promptmy work.  Living in a rural environment, you witness the wonders of the natural world and learn to be resourceful with what is readily available. This lesson has a profound impact on my work as a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice combines mixed media drawing with subjects from nature and daily life. 

Plants demonstrate nature’s resilience and capacity for resurgence. These works observe, record, preserve, and compare specimens across Minnesota’s various climactic zones, cataloging the diversity and range of the state’s flora. Landscapes are often celebrated for their grand vistas, trees, water features, and animal life. This work celebrates the often overlooked but no less integral niche of vegetation occurring in the undergrowth—the specimens with whom we share our immediate living space. 

Naturally occurring subjects are collected and brought into the studio to capture their silhouettes on paper: botanical portraiture. The resulting line drawings are developed using masking techniques, India and acrylic inks, Micron pen, cut paper, and collage. A single contour line—this minimum of detail provides enough visual information to aptly identify the botanical sitter in any given portrait. Hyper-realistic color develops the character and clarity of a work in a manner akin to the dying of slide plates or the recoloring of microscopic imagery, bridging the gap between art and science. Graphic, rhythmic line work then ornaments the subject, reviving traces of its cast shadow, texture, and surface detail. The balance of contrasting processes echoes man’s simultaneous reliance upon, struggle against, and impact on the environment.

I am driven to accentuate the ordinary, to highlight how the overlap in the supposed mundane of our individual lives unites us. A plant and its shadow reflect that, however simple, there is great value in the surroundings and experiences that occupy our existence.