Artist's Statement
In A Child's Garden of Verses, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:

The world is so full of a number of things
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

This "Happy Thought" is my daily inspiration, and discovering, playing with, and bringing to others' attention the many wonderful things in the outer world of nature and the inner world of the imagination is my passion. My collages arise from the borderland where these two worlds meet. They combine textures (rocks, tree bark, sand, leaves, building reflections), computer-generated fractals and kaleidoscope patterns, and photographs of natural objects and occasional human beings to create art that both celebrates nature and goes within and beyond it into surrealism and fantasy. Although some of my images are playful, I hope that others will puzzle and even haunt the viewer, leading to contemplation of a spiritual dimension beyond our physical surroundings.

My interest in art is lifelong, but the notion that I could be an artist came late. After many years as a nonfiction writer and poet, I began making paper collages from an extensive collection of magazine pictures about 10 years ago, shortly after my 50th birthday. When I discovered the image-manipulation program Photoshop in the late 1990s, I saw that even more creative collages could be made on the computer, and after several years of struggle, I learned enough about the program to begin producing digital work. Although I still make paper collages, using small pieces of magazine photos or colored papers to create complex landscapes, most of my work is now done on the computer with my own photographs.

Some of my collages, like science fiction and fantasy stories, start with "What if?" What if jellyfish could float through a forest instead of through the ocean? What if the doors and windows of a room opened onto completely different landscapes? Others grow out of myths or traditional symbols, such as the Tarot arcana and the ancients' four elements. Some arise from my own visions--the Guardian at the portal leading inside a bearded iris, the mysterious "other" forest that (if you are lucky) you may discover opening beyond the conventional one. In still others, I combine fractals, natural textures, and kaleidoscope images and follow where the results lead me. Autumn Moon, for example, started as a blend of fractals and a kaleidoscope pattern made of leaf textures. The combination reminded me of birds flying across the moon, so I added images of actual migrating birds to it. My work takes me on strange and wonderful journeys, and I hope it will do the same for those who see it.
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