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I photograph trees.  They are sculptures, formed by weather, fire, animal and human damage and old age.  They don't run away or try to pose.  I take their photograph because I am trying to figure out what they are trying to say to me...and maybe what I am trying to say back.

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The finished pieces are combinations of many layers of photos. Besides the obvious photo of the tree there are also background photos of other things that change elements of the finished piece. These photos can be almost anything; sap, bubbles in a cup of coffee, rust, inadvertent photos of my hand, rocks, my studio sink, a bit of the sky from a Turner painting...it is a very large file! 

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I deliberately change the colors, textures, and light using these background layers in the photos to understand what I am seeing and what caused me to take the photo in the first place.  As I change this or that in the image it becomes less ordinary and suddenly I think, "oh, this is what it is!"

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When I decide I am done, I print the piece on transparency film with pigment ink. Once dry, they are transferred by hand to emulsion coated watercolor paper.  They are archival, and one of a kind, as transferring photo is not an exact process.

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My hope is that viewers are arrested by the strangesness and the reality of such common objects and find their connection to the universe.