The Koan works contain carbon-laden graphite-- mysterious, dark, moody, almost mystical, a requiem for the earth. The images navigate a medley of memory, hopes, and topography of self. They carry my childhood landscape forward in my mind. Their wild, tangled, and impenetrable landscapes are my response to the rapidly changing environment. The solace I remember as a child in nature becomes solastalgic.

These large encaustic monotypes use handmade paint heavily pigmented with graphite, a mineral form of carbon. Wax with graphite is like crude oil when melted and fluid; nature meets industrial. The fluidity of the wax requires letting go while remaining mindful; its unpredictability necessitates invention and leads to an improvisational dance.

In Zen Buddhism, a koan is a riddle meant to perplex and illuminate the inadequacy of logic and reason and to provoke enlightenment. My Koans' puzzle is this: how is it that carbon is fundamental to all forms of life, yet once industrialized, it is destructive to the planet?