Stag Beetle Specimen, 2016, watercolor on birch wood panel, 16” x 16”

Stag Beetle Specimen combines personally collected insects with a brooch and buttons from my grandmother’s jewelry box.  The combination explores the ways the domestic and wild can be recombined, an elegy created via the debris of both.  In addition, the stag beetle is part of a long tradition of natural history painting and this work pays tribute to that tradition.  These beetle carcasses were left after being fed on by birds which is a divergence from that tradition, one that hopes to allude to the environmental difficulties we face in the 21st century.  This work and it’s companion, Ecosystem, were selected for the 2016 Delta Exhibition.

Ecosystem, watercolor on birch wood panel, 16” x 16”, 2016, Delta Exhibition 2016

This work combines personally collected insects and a frog studied from my yard with a brooch and buttons from my grandmother’s jewelry box. These items and beings combine to create a personal ecosystem, one that combines domestic and wild. Trompe l'oeil paintings of insects are part of a long tradition in natural history, and I hope this work participates in that tradition in a new way that creates a personal, intimate take.