What medium do you use to create your paintings? Why?
I prefer oils, because of their flexibility in many different techniques and their beauty, but also because I found it useful in studying the work of early naturalists and exploring the state as it was in the nineteenth century. Before photography, people mostly used oil sketching to record the colorful landscapes of the Sierra, the Central Valley, the deserts, and also wildlife. I studied their techniques, and I enjoyed learning about tried-and-true traditional painting techniques. So in a way I am honoring the historic California artistic traditions of landscape sketching by artists such as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Hill.
Did you use to draw when you were younger? Or is this a skill you developed later in life?
I have been drawing birds since kindergarten, and do not remember a time when art was not a fun hobby! I am self-taught from decades of practice.
What do people usually say when they see your artwork?
They say how realistic the landscapes appear, although they also like the quick, more stylistic animal sketches done freehand. They ask me how I can sketch a moving bird so quickly, and I tell them it is memory practice—capturing the image in your mind's eye, then later putting it down on paper.
What is the purpose of A State of Change?
To help people see that nature is constantly in flux, and there is never really a stable landscape with unchanging populations of animals and plants. We humans sometimes have too short a perspective to see the changes happening around us gradually (and sometimes quickly). People get focused on storms and the big events, but I became fascinated with the more subtle changes—shifting patches of wildflowers over the years in a grassland, centuries-long fluctuations in oak woodland populations, how certain tropical birds may have invaded California long ago and then vanished, or the ebb and flow of sardines and anchovies off our coasts.
Anything surprising happen that you did not expect?
In my research I was surprised to find out how important fire was and is in shaping California's landscapes. We have been taught that fire is "evil," but there is another story. Over the millennia, fire has set a balance of vegetation dynamics that we disrupt at our peril. Native people have been working with fire for a very long time, and there is much to relearn today.
What challenges did you encounter?
Tracking down rare animals and plants was a fun challenge—waiting to see California condors fly over a ridge, traveling to wild grizzly country to search for bears, hiking into remote hills to discover native grass patches. The most difficult part of this project for me was winnowing down the huge amount of material I gathered into a book form. It is all so interesting!
How did your book come to be?
Growing up in the East Bay, I became curious in the 1980s about the appearance of the land I grew up on before there were cities. I have always been interested in the past, playing with dinosaurs as a kid, but this question provided a direct pathway to explore the past right where I stood. Some research turned up that the land my house stood on used to be beautiful grassland, covered with bunchgrasses and wildflowers, elk and antelope and especially grizzlies. I was so fascinated, I continued my exploration of this topic, and years later wanted to make it into a book to share with others.
