February, 2012: Artists are uniquely positioned at this time in history to work as visual storytellers, and to create bridges of understanding, by making some of the complex issues that we face today accessible to the public, and more hopeful.  I’m interested in using my talents and sensibility to inform and inspire people around difficult environmental issues in particular.  The love and gratitude that I feel for the natural world is potent, and comes from a childhood spent to a large degree in nature.  With the almost incomprehensible global threats to our environment that we are faced with in particular, there is a strong tendency for people to go into overwhelm, denial, or worst of all, despair - which seems quite dangerous.  Once we disengage, or become cynical, we stop taking responsibility, and then we stop considering how we can contribute to the change that is needed. In 2012 I chose the New Mexico Land Office gallery in Santa Fe as an appropriate venue for Rain, an exhibition of my first environmental paintings. Ray Powell, our State Land Commissioner (in photo), is one of New Mexico’s most solid advocates for the environment.  Part of the proceeds from the sales at this exhibition went to Western Watersheds, a fabulous conservations group with a remarkable track record in litigation on behalf of the natural world.