Like Us
As a child I spent my summers playing among endless rows of apple, peach and cherry orchards, swimming and catching tadpoles in their irrigation ponds and camping adjacent sheep and cattle in the Wasatch and Uinta mountains. As a young adult I moved to the city and lost touch with where the food I ate came from.
Traveling abroad in my 30s shifted my perspective. Seeing terraced rice paddies in the mountains of Thailand, chickens roaming the narrow alleys of Hanoi, patchwork fields in central France, or endless olive trees across Spain, Italy and Greece, I was jealous of how close their food was. After seeing an intimate connection of people and place, back home I began to notice how much of my food was still being grown around me - I’d just stopped seeing it. And so, my paintings are born from a renewed way of looking: appreciation for the weightless arabesque patterning of apple blossoms or the sense of awe I get observing the shifting masses of a grazing herd.
When people talk with me about my work, many reflect fondly on grandparents who raised livestock or farmed for a living. But I’m grateful these aren’t just things of the past, as land develops pockets of sustenance remain. A close look finds our intimate connection with the land.
