Ten years ago, my partner and I visited the city of Cadiz in the south of Spain. The Cadiz Cathedral dominates the city skyline as you walk along the Avenida Campo del Sur. Although we visited mid-November, the brilliant sunshine warmed us as we walked along the Atlantic coast.

In this piece, I’m working much more abstractly, attempting to gather all the irregular angles of this cityscape.

Point of Inspiration: Baluarte de Capuchinos, Cadiz

I captured this image on a foggy October morning on Lopez Island, Washington. It was eerily still, and the fog blanketed the bay. Kingfishers zipped from tree to tree, squawking as they flew. This great blue heron stood perfectly still in the shallow water just offshore. I thought to myself how utterly focused the heron appeared, at the center of his own universe, the rest of the world swirled about him madly — but he was the still center, waiting, watching, breathe in, breathe out.

I rendered this piece in my studio on Canson Print Making Rag. I used a mix of pastels — softer Sennelier pastels for the background fog; and harder-edged Prismacolor pastels for the foreground.

This work is my second attempt at capturing a women’s crew team — this time much more abstract and ethereal. The combination of l’Ecu pastels on canvas allowed me to create more of an atmosphere around the rowers. Their watery realm is a world unto itself, the rowers enveloped by the lake and the energy of their teammates. I’m attempting here to convey their concentration to focus themselves — focus within, to gather their strength; focus among, to connect to each other through the water.

I’ll deliver this finished commission to Seattle at the end of the week.

This is the sixth of a series of eight mosaic stepping stones. A more modern, abstract geometric. The background tesserae are a Crema Marfil marble (which I deliberately dulled to a more ivory tone.) The foreground shapes in done in claret red, Nero Maquina (black), and red ochre. I wanted to give the illusion that the vertical blocks were foreground to the broad, horizontal stripe.

This is the fifth of a series of eight stone mosaic stepping stones destined to be set within the bounds of our thyme garden. Whenever I see a gibbous moon, I can convince myself I can see its dark section. I wanted this piece to show the intrinsic beauty of the stone by using larger tesserae.

The “bright” side of the moon is a composition of Persian red travertine and Aegean silver marble; the dark side uses Teos green marble and Scabas travertine; the border in a copper yellow marble.