36" x 48"
Oil on handmade wood panel
100 hand-grown and incinerated native plants with handmade medium
This painting is an exploration of biodiversity loss through physical loss—a meditation on destruction, memory, and transformation.
For this piece, I painstakingly cultivated 100 different native plants over the course of three years, then incinerated them to produce the pigments used in the painting. Each plant, once vibrant and distinct, is now rendered into an indecipherable black mass, symbolizing the irreversible loss of ecosystems and species.
The painting employs layering techniques pioneered by Mark Rothko, creating a surprising depth within the base layers. These foundations are built up further through experimental mediums and application techniques, rejecting traditional tools in favor of an organic, process-driven approach.
I use no paintbrushes — instead, the painting emerges from the very objects that shaped it. Pigments are applied using charcoal, my hands, palette knives, mullers, seeds, and even a broom, leaving behind sweeping marks of incinerated pigment modeling the destruction and erasure of biodiversity. Each layer accumulates the remains of incinerated plant material, embedding their very essence into the surface.
The final layer is applied with a variety of seeds, some of which have embedded themselves permanently into the work. In their presence, the piece embodies more than just loss — it carries the quiet potential of renewal. Inside loss is hope.
