I was the fifth and final generation in my family to tend our farm. My twenty-five years of farming were defined by the psychic charge of rural space, where nonverbal communication with our animals came intuitively and strange encounters with wild animals were commonplace. With my ancestors’ bones resting in the soil nearby, through the land all generations lived simultaneously.

 

I use oil painting to mimic the rituals and seasonality of farming. Each painting begins by stretching linen with the same mallet that I once used to drive fence posts when rotating sheep through pastures. Sheep and other animals serve as symbols of my own family stories while wildflowers represent the liminality between place and the supernatural.

 

Now surrounded by the urban environment of New York City, canvas and paint replace soil and seed as the substrates through which I pass on my inherited knowledge of land stewardship.