My portraits depict a playful engagement with nature in her guise as the eternal feminine. Allegorical figures wear honeycomb garb, butterfly crowns, and caterpillar necklaces. Last summer’s leaves are raiment for their decorative pleasure and metaphoric compost for the eyes. Entomological hats and mythopoetic headgear display life cycles, food sources and sometimes predators as well.
Like most children I was entranced by the tiny worlds which flourished in the back yard, realms of bees with their royal families, worm like caterpillars who sprouted fairy wings and took flight, birds who heroically reappeared every spring.
Now long afterwards I share my longing to return to the mythic garden, one just out the door, perhaps, where the very small creatures are celebrated by garden royalty, the Queen Bees, Monarchs and the bird women who may roost there.
At a time when the smallest animals, the pollinators and birds are are suffering from exposure to many poisons may we make room and safe space in all our gardens for the noble Queen Bees, Monarchs and heroic birds.
