"Spring on the Prairie"
Home is our prairie grasslands, with its four distinct seasons. This series is inspired by the lightening, brightening, and renewal that spring brings and highlights 12 native prairie wildflowers. Though we have lost the majority of our native prairie, efforts are underway to restore more native prairie for ecological health.
Questions that guided this series were, ‘how can I convey gratitude and celebration of spring on the prairie? What does spring on the prairie look like if I looked a little closer?’
I had been wanting to bring some realism into my work and decided to draw them in illustrative form with a common color palette. This is also the first series I tried raw stretched canvas on frames Matthew made. Other materials used include fluid acrylic paint, raw earth pigment powders, ink pencil, pastel, and graphite for the botanical drawings.
My hope is that this work connects you to the place we call home, and lightens your heart. Painting and drawing each of these was an act of gratitude and connection with the land.
From badlands to woodlands, sand dunes to rolling hills, our prairie ecosystem has been one of the most diverse in the world. Though we have lost so much of our native prairie wildlife, our grasslands are adaptable and tough. We remain an important force in the evolution and restoration of the prairie.
This series is a culmination of creative processes, natural history, and a celebration of the land we call home. An ode to our roots, deep and diverse as the tall grasses.'
It is a recognition of the Indigenous wisdom traditions, stories, and the people who have been caretakers of this land as alive and kin.
It is an invitation to look closer, to see the diversity and wild beauty of the prairie grasslands and how we can connect with it.
My intention with this work is to celebrate and elevate the beauty and ecology of roots and home.
To explore the intersections of science, history, beauty, and the wisdom of plants.
"Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children's future matters, to care for the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do."
-Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, "Braiding Sweetgrass"
"Summer on the Prairie"
This is the second series in the ethnobotanical journey across the prairie grasslands we call home, highlighting 15 summer native prairie wildflowers.
But this series offers new aspects.
The flowers are all drawn in illustrative form once again, with a common color palette with fluid acrylic. However, most of the earth pigments I foraged and created myself. The places where these pigments come from are very special to me, and my work is headed in this direction of using more natural pigments to paint with.
I also spent many hours studying, walking alongside, and talking with as many of these wildflowers as I could, being outside painting with the land and drawing their likenesses in their proximity.
This series encompasses the literal buzz and warmth of summer with accompanying pollinator friends.
Photography by Britta the Photographer
