About the Art:

Black Walnut belongs to an ongoing series of colored pencil and ink drawings that began as an exercise in recollection and association, drawing seeds, leaves, insects, and other seemingly minute natural elements from recall. Inspired by Spiritualist Art, Victorian Natural History Illustrations, and Storybook Drawings, this series utilizes nature motifs and esoteric allusions to create meditative images. 

Ultimately, I have come to acknowledge these drawings as tokens of a largely forgotten childhood. Each chosen subject (black walnuts, honeysuckle, magnolia seed pods, thistle) held sentimental, memory-jogging and lore-building properties for me (a thistle is not just a thistleThe Thistle was the tall, alien creature that seemed to have spontaneously emerged from my  childhood front lawn on Harrow Drive; the Magnolia Seed Pod was a make-shift tiger’s paw during child’s play; The Okra represented a full belly and the security of a Grandmother’s kitchen; and the Black Walnut was a hollow-eyed face staring back at me as I cupped it in my hand). As I struggle to remember major events of the past, these tiny talismans represent specific moments of recognition, slivers of memories, for the viewer to contemplate and project their own memories onto.