I painted this piece for Sageland Collaborative‘s biodiversity challenge. As I wrote in my Instagram caption:

When I think of biodiversity, I think about scale. How big landscape-level communities are made up of small individuals and how small individuals are influenced by the broader community of organisms as well as other large scale factors like geology and climate, forming a relational web that is fascinating whether you’re looking at a huge mountain or a tiny insect.

It was a different experience to spend a few weeks thinking about how I wanted to show biodiversity through art then make a painting that pulls on hundreds of memories from poking around in streams and beav ponds instead of painting what I see in front of me. (I’m sure nobody is surprised I went for a beaver theme.) To be honest, painting the land that’s in front of me is definitely still my favorite way to create but I’m proud of how this turned out and it’s always good to push myself to create in different ways.

Check out Sageland’s ‘Art Supporting Biodiversity in the West’ blog post to read more of my thoughts on this piece and other artists’ entries!