A “Shifting baseline describes a gradual change in our accepted norms and expectations for the environment across generations. Our tolerance for environmental degradation increases and our expectations for the natural world are lowered.” Bryan Hamilton, National Park Service.

Shifting Lands is my baseline, a visual collection of moments from Biloxi, New Orleans, Lafayette, and Chauvin. These mixed media paintings and sculptures are a celebration of the spaces that I keep returning to, and the knowledge I have gained through working with biologists. Some document a moment as I saw it, others capture the accumulated imagery of many months, and together they tell a story about the way I see the Gulf South. My personal love language for the delicate wispy feathers of a Great Egret (Egretta thula), or the geometric lines of a Dwarf Palmetto (Sabal minor). However, grief also exists in these painted landscapes, an understanding that the gulf is vulnerable, and that I am capturing these lands before they shift or disappear entirely.