papers, string, thread, gold leaf, graphite, velvet, felt, ink, 30 x 39 inches.

Above are echinacea  flowers that I drew in our garden in Massachusetts.  It is my favorite place to sit and  draw.  I couldn’t resist making their horizon my favorite Japanese paper that is going extinct.  When I bought it, the man who made it was very old and didn’t have a good apprentice.  Sadly, he may have even died already.  This paper is much darker than my uplifted feelings that I have when I am drawing in the flora.  With the cycle of the seasons, the flowers disappear, just like the paper. This is why the name Ghost Flowers.

Although at the beginning, I thought that the artwork was going to be primarily about the echinacea, as I progressed, it became more and more about the hidden lively earth world underneath the garden.  Lush soil, roots and fungi are the sustenance for the upper world that we see. They are underrated and are called dirt, but they are golden light magic.