Moving with the Mountain: Art, Rhythm, and Returning to Nature
“From the ‘Mountain Chain’ series, 30x40, mixed metal leaf and dyed silver. Created in rhythm with the desert bloom and early morning light.”
Moving with the Mountain: Art, Rhythm, and Returning to Nature
There’s a rhythm to the earth that I try to paint with. Not over or against, but with. That rhythm is what I return to again and again — in early mornings, in hikes through the Superstition Mountains, in the movement of the studio where light breaks over silver and gold leaf and I have to step in to keep my baby from coloring over my collages with the marker he just found. This is all natural. Beingness.
When I say I’m inspired by the landscape, I don’t mean just the view. I mean the experience of being in it. Moving with it. Listening to it. Letting it change me.
This new collection isn’t just about mountains. It’s about rhythm. Aliveness. Light. Presence. It’s about remembering that we are nature — not observers, but participants.
I don’t see nature as something I step into. I see it as something I am. When I’m in sync with it, I feel more alive, more at peace — and that aliveness combined with peace is what fuels my newest body of work.
When the Specific Becomes Universal
I recently finished a piece called That Mountain Chain — a 30x40 mixed media painting made with dyed silver and metal leaf. What I didn’t expect was how many different mountain memories it would evoke in other people. Three separate viewers saw completely different ranges in the same painting — each connecting it to a landscape burned into their own memory.
That’s the power of abstraction: it lets the specific become universal. The point isn’t to depict a mountain exactly. The point is to hold the feeling of being in one — grounded, ancient, alive.
Syncing with the Season You’re In
This season of life feels a little underground — not glamorous, but essential. It’s where the sorting happens. The quiet edits. The hard choices. The not-so-pretty work that gives the final image its backbone.
But I’m here for it. And I’m letting it be beautiful in its own way. There’s elegance in the slow build. There’s grace in the morning stillness.
There’s nothing separate about it — art, nature, motherhood, movement — it’s all one ecology. I’m just part of it, and that’s where the power lives.
