Badlands

There was an unexpected blip that changed my life November 2019. They say people come into your life for a reason, a season or lifetime. I'm convinced this chance meeting may have been for all three. I had never been inspired to work in landscapes but after listening to my new persons stories and tales of digging for fossils everything changed. His usual stoic demeanor was replaced with childlike awe when he talked of this place. Simultaneously my love of museuming and modern art was reignited after years of health related dormancy. I felt compelled to draw this beautiful land for me and ultimately for him. To wake up to his happy place every morning. The size was chosen for a place in his home. So grand with high ceilings and beautiful natural light.

I began the drawing in February 2020. I'd stay in my studio long into the evening, my favorite piano music playing to get lost in the experience. I was mesmerized by the undulating mounds that seemed to go on forever. It became a meditation to draw them, repetition of shape and texture but then a blip, a change in light, a ripple in the surface. The thought of finding buried fossils in this maze was overwhelming to me. But then I understood when he told me it was the excitement of the hunt, the possibility, the journey. That was what I felt as I drew the shape over and over. It was in the act of creating that I felt most alive. And then March 2020 hit and the studios was closed. It was an almost 9 month hiatus before I was able to finish up The Badlands. It never made it to its final destination. Instead it's been shown in a few galleries and like a tumbleweed blowing to its next home.