“I have been scared that the world is falling apart since I was a small child. 

Unfortunately or fortunately, I have lived at a time of great affluence and opportunity for white people, and I have benefited greatly. However, I came of age at a time in Texas as LBJ’s prediction that the Democratic Party in the South would be destroyed by the civil rights legislation he enacted came true. And slowly, it was destroyed. I found myself in Texas, fighting to preserve and save neighborhoods. Fighting to have adequate regulations and restrictions, so that the wonderful things about Austin, Dallas, or Liberty Hill would be saved and preserved. I was continually defeated by growth pressures that were scary to me. I saw the Tea Party develop. I heard Reagan’s call to attack the administrative state. The accusations that people like me were a part of some deep state. And it made no sense to me. Women’s rights were terribly important to me, and yet they’ve been trampled. 

I fled Texas in 2007 to come up to Washington State, to this island. I was a refugee. And what turned me on about the island was the fact that the colors were brilliant. The softer light made by the latitude gave the colors and light a whole different sense than the way it was in Texas. And I immediately dove into wanting to save it permanently; what I was experiencing and seeing in on Orcas. It was my defiant way. Still being a historic preservationist and neighborhood conservationist. And so full throttle, that’s what I’ve done. It has taken me a long time to fully understand what it was that I was doing. But I was going to ground. And over time, political forces in the United States seem to be hell-bent on replicating what I experienced in Texas.

I’ve become ever more fearful, and ever more determined to paint and create and capture what is here on Orcas that I have loved so much.”