I am a watercolour artist and science illustrator from Minneapolis, Minnesota, currently working in Australia as Big Red Sharks Studios. My work has been shown in galleries in the United States and Australia, and my illustration work has been featured in numerous scientific publications, museums, journals, textbooks and educational websites.
My paintings are interpretations of familiar scenes from nature but observed through a hyper-focused lens. I zoom into a species to give it new life. A patch of mushrooms becomes a city of intertwining stems and gills. An unassuming grasshopper becomes a magnificent flying beast. I'm most interested in creating worlds within worlds by depicting familiar organisms in unfamiliar ways. My style is very detailed, using colour, composition and form to break out of traditional representational art tropes.
I create art as a way to interpret the underlying systems in history, language and nature. I find motivation in fossil collections, mycology, folklore, natural history museums, terrariums, esoteric traditions, entomology and sea monsters. I love complex overlapping stories and visuals.
I currently live and work in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne, Australia, and I have found boundless inspiration from the ecosystem here. Living in a fern tree forest, surrounded by hills and streams and visited by exotic parrots and bushy-tailed possums has been a dream. My most recent series has been featured at In.cube8r Gallery in Melbourne, where I have also been invited to be a guest curator for upcoming exhibitions.
Big Red Sharks comes from my childhood in Minnesota. Even though I'm from the land-locked Mid-West of the United States, I've had shark dreams (or nightmares if you prefer) almost weekly since I can remember. As I grew up, sharks became an obsession of mine, which became a lifelong love of ocean life and nature in general. Add that to my childhood nickname as a kid (being a tall redhead) and you get Big Red Sharks.