Dream of Turtle Island
Price range: $ 95.00 through $ 18,000.0036×48″ · Acrylic on linen · page 33
This painting began the moment I pressed play on the audiobook of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and picked up a brush. I started with a blank canvas and no idea what I was going to paint.
A reclining dreamer appeared. Her braids drift through the water like currents, carrying the movement of the painting across the canvas. Around her, the dream fills with sea life — fish moving through open water, shells and reefs, and above them a dark celestial planet holding Turtle Island itself, suspended in space.
At one point a snake appeared and honestly scared me. Instead of painting it out, I placed it inside an unbreakable glass globe — alive but contained, ready but unable to strike. As the painting evolved, the snake slowly changed form and became an eel, something that belonged naturally in the watery world.
By the time it was finished, it felt less like something I planned and more like something that arrived while I was paying attention.





















