Gardenscape

My favorite time to garden is in the rain. The soil, soft and moist, seems richer with life as worms and snails slip along. If you don't dig in the garden, there's a lot of life to miss. It's the smallness of nature-- the seeds, the weeds, the critters-- that captured my imagination when I painted a series of surreal landscapes. Gardenscape and Evescape, both oil on paper, anthropomorphized the world I was discovering while in the garden. The paintings, small in scale, required as much patience and scrutiny as gardening-- working with a magnifying lamp and one hair brushes, but it was a meditative and aesthetic activity I truly enjoyed. So in today's rain, I hope to work the soil and unearth some new inspiration.