New Work: Vashon Artist Residency

Every day while in residency, I would do my yoga and meditation practice outside on the deck, facing the bay and forested landscape surrounding. Then I would sit on the deck studying the visual elements, drawing, painting, photographing, and writing about what I was experiencing. There is a group of trees that seemed to repeatedly call my attention, “Look over here! Here we are! There you are!” They drew me into their embrace and through countless sketches of them I began to know them more intimately. I covered hundreds of miles running and hiking around Vashon during my time there (I’m an endurance athlete). During my runs around Maury, around Quartermaster Harbor to Burton Acres Park and beyond, or swimming at Vashon Pool, other majestic trees spoke to me. Individual relationships began to develop.

Drawing and painting these beings individually as portraits is the most truthful way for me to express my appreciation, my exaltation, my love. There is a deepening of relationship within the process of intense focus, a type of sustained connection while responding to the visual-sensual experience through mark-making. Painting them on a large scale is a way to celebrate and declare this remarkable thing of being in a body and experiencing the perfection of nature. As humans we tend to want to protect the things that we fall in love with. By elevating into awareness the preciousness of every being within this forested land, we might transcend boundaries and live to protect that which is sacred.