Today I’m going to take you through the process of making the first painting in the series, titled Intersections of Land and Sea.

Recently I’ve found myself enjoying the process of making art more than I have in a while, and when I sat down to think about why that was, it occurred to me that slowing down had a big role in the renewed joy I was feeling when creating.

What do birds have to do with landscape? We may think of birds as creatures of the air, but their connections to the landscape are abundant. From interacting with and influencing their habitat through nesting, migration, and predation to how their physical presence becomes a part of the landscape we see.

Each of us creates ripples in the world around us, no matter how small we may feel. The world may feel vast, a wild place that we can’t influence, and it can feel scary and helpless to be one human. But our ripples reach out from us and touch those around us, and in turn they create more ripples. Just like a small fish breaking the surface of a smooth lake, or a pebble dropped into a still puddle, our ripples reach out beyond their source to touch, change, and be changed by o

“Why do you love birds?” I think if you asked any birder this question, you’d get many different answers but a lot of the same sentiments.