Delighted to share that Secret Garden juried in to the Mars:An Artistic Mission exhibit put on by the California Art Club. The show launches at  https://www.californiaartclub.org/exhibition/mars-an-artistic-mission/ on Feb 18th, 2021, the same day the 🇺🇸 Mars 2020 spacecraft – Perseverance – will land at Jezero Crater on the red planet.

This show is an innovative departure from the norm, and was conceived and designed to celebrate the intersection of art and science. If you’d like to know more about the this latest Mars mission or the origins and intent of the exhibit, please visit the browser link above. For all you space mission enthusiasts, see NASA’s link to follow progress: https://www.nasa.gov/perseverance. For all you artists out there, the links to NASA’s photo database NASA Image Search is crammed full of inspirational references for abstract, fantasy and illustrative artists alike. I’m looking forward to seeing the actual show - less than two weeks from today!

It’s wonderful to be encouraged in taking risks and pushing new directions creatively, and I can’t think of a better year to try for abstract realism than 2020. Yes, it’s still nature-inspired and focussed on color, pattern, light and flaws. No, it doesn’t look like any flower I’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s a one-of-a-kind, and a lovely way to bring the outside in. To help you envision more ways to do exactly that, images of the lush and extra-terrestrial Secret Garden are on my landing 😉page too: click here 🚀🚀🚀.

Artist’s Statement

Secret Garden is a celebration of the wonder, grit, ingenuity and promise that drive extra-terrestrial exploration. Secret caches of water appear to lie deep beneath the surface of the Red Planet, making us dream of the life it supports—a life radically different than ours.

In a world seemingly turned on its head, the values and colors of the flower are inverted. Atmospheric infusions of minerals and dust deliver brilliant pinks, oranges and reds, offset by fiery blues and greens of sunset in the remains of the day. A once-familiar backdrop becomes fragmented and changes with light—or dark, the sweeps of winds over dunes, the sliding of gullies, and the pressure and tumult of shifting, long-buried ice. She has an ever-changing kaleidoscope of fractal patterns, both familiar—and not. 

Secret Garden emerges from the depths of a long ago hidden salt-pool, a riotous sweep of color… and a siren’s call to wander and explore. She is radically different from any flora we’ve known, unapologetically bursting to new life on Mars as a radiant, energetic and resilient transformation of her ancient self.