Before you are images from my Landscape Mosaics - Coastal Landscape series. The images are arranged according to ecosystem zonation, from the estuary to the salt marsh, from the ecotone, to the sand plain and to the dunes. Landscape Mosaics blend art, science and new technologies to interpret sensitive and endangered landscapes for a wide audience in public settings and in print. The salt marsh is that protective line of saltwater wetland edging the shore. It serves as a defense between land and sea and is vulnerable to development and pollution. Landscape Mosaics uses art to focus attention on these critical landscapes.

The Spartina Landscape Mosaic was set on a tidal river. 1,500 hand painted posts were set along a tidal meander in staggered intervals depicting the slow emergence of growth in early spring, the rapid greening of late spring, the steady growth of summer, the seeding of autumn, and the slow decline to dormancy. I charted over one hundred colors in the Spartina marsh through the seasons. When I painted, I always blended colors and kept a sheet of the swatches arranged in a hierarchical way. Landscape Mosaics examines color, charted in the field and from my photographs of the landscapes to create blended pixel color palettes. An installation of color panels in Wellfleet, MA set hundreds of panels into the marsh in a study of light and perception using color. The studies of color and pattern have been translated into a Landscape Mosaics book and transformed into large-scale site installations and as personal explorations- pushing the idea of the hand made paper art book with the Leaves in Grass series.

I am interested in light, color, and the science of color change in the landscape. I have measured the color in the field and found that color variation is the result of environmental factors. Nutrients, water, oxygenation, topography and seasonal change affect the color palette of the plants. Color serves as a barometer of the systems health. Even a centimeter of topographic change can affect the coloration and dormancy.

Landscape Mosaics is reaching a point of closure, as I work toward the publication of books and articles. I am interested in publishing the work in order to reach a wider audience and to educate the public through the art and science of color in the landscape. In future, I wish to further translate the idea into colored light, film and projections in gallery, architectural and landscape installations. These explorations use the innovations of art, science and technology to explain ecological principles through the seasons with color analysis. The Spiral Nebula is based on the flow pattern of water and air. After working into the early morning hours this winter on the Spartina pixel mosaic, I looked out on a moonlit, snowy night to see the wind swirling the ice crystals into enfolding forms. The Spiral became prismatic in the moonlight and beamed color across the landscape. The Spiral Nebula attempts to create the experience of the archetypal flow pattern and color experienced, in what a meteorologist called - a unique weather phenomenon.