First Edition 2024

A raven, its ebony beak puffing steam into the cold morning air, caws from a branch, watching me with its keen eye. I acknowledge the birds that radiate a sentient glow on my walks. They remember you. I placed this couple, and a high-flying third on patrol in the Chiricahua mountains. An early fall storm approaches. I'm jealous of flight. I'm also jealous of the godlike views of the world. Given the bird's occult symbolism, I couldn't help but frame the three with some alchemical symbols, phrases and phases.

First Edition 2023

The manzanita, a botanical marvel, served as the primary inspiration for this work. Its mature form, characterized by gnarled branches and sharp angles, evokes the complex structure of the human brain. As the tree ages, certain portions undergo senescence, bleaching white as teak. However, vital red sections continue to nourish the living branches, ensuring the tree's survival. This unique adaptation, similar to the iconic Bristlecone Pine, underscores the tree's remarkable resilience and ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions.

The Sky Islands' smallest raptor, the elf owl, is the spirit of the piece. Knowledge rests on the branches of the mind even as memory ages and falls/fails with age. A concept I'm familiar with as the years pass by.

First Edition 2022

The Century Plant (living 20 to 30 years) is a low thick leaved agave found throughout the Sonoran Desert and bordering areas. As a desert plant, it’s a significant landmark 6-10 feet around, and at the end of its life, putting forth a heroic asparagus-like stalk that branches and flowers to a height of 20-30 feet. This one is in the backyard of my friend Richard Spelker and is vast and inspiring.

I wanted a dramatic, rocky background, so I journeyed to the Dragoon Mountains, known for this. The area was bursting with life from more than 18 inches of summer rain in early August, filling dried ponds and growing grasses above your waist by the end of the season. Insect and reptile life was abounding as well as birds migrating by. “Just add water” should be the tagline of this summer Eden. The grass dries out with a blonder cast to the landscape for the rest of the year.

While pursuing intaglio printing at school in the mid-80s, I saw a resemblance in my own work to artist William Wiley’s work. His checkered patterns and black lines resonated with my etching work, and I thought it appropriate to credit him as an inspiration in this piece. NASA’s latest moonshot test rocket has these registration markers included, and it is a fitting metaphor for something that takes decades to build before blasting up and away.

First Edition 2022

Illustrating a freshwater fish in its natural habitat, in a natural pose other than the usual water splash caught in mid-air from the muscle-arched body lunging toward a mayfly, mouth agape; the fisherman’s dream of a perfect strike. This pose presented an exciting challenge of depicting above and below water landscapes in the same piece.

Small canyons with streams and cool blue-green pools do exist in and around the Sonoran Desert. The endangered Apache Trout thrived here, but interspecies competition with the Spotted Trout, stocked by humans, has reduced its domain to 25 miles of the Gila River, smaller tributaries, and adjacent parts of New Mexico. A fly fisherman in my past life, I like to spend time with good fishing spots, but it’s with a sketchbook and camera.

The trout is a notoriously difficult catch for a fisherman due to the miracle of its vision. The trout eye is engineered to deal with light refraction through the water’s surface and is sensitive enough to see insects above water by the dim light of the stars. The trout can also see you unless you are crafty enough to be outside of its wide cone of vision.

Although the Apache Trout is not a current resident of the Sonoran Desert, I felt it appropriate to include it in the series considering the conservation efforts to restock this rare and wonderful inhabitant of our desert.

First Edition 2021

Ah, crystals. I know what you think when you see crystals. New Age guru was not my intention, though. I wanted to depict something mineral, if only one subject, to make a footnote in my work that the Sonoran Desert is a wellspring of gems, precious metals, and beautiful minerals. Given that, yearly, I'm steps from giant tents of vendors and prospectors selling their gems and minerals at the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show, I've become a fan. I also like following posts at the Mineral Database, considering I know very little about the field. I do know there are hidden treasures in hard-to-find places here.

Walking along the surface of the desert in hilly or mountainous areas, the possibilities below your feet are reality. Chambers of water, fault lines ever moving, cavities filled with mineral formations, and spelunkers are still discovering immense cave systems. It was hard to pick one thing from the ground that symbolized it for me. Copper, turquoise, and silver are actively mined here. Meteorite finds are commonplace, given visible craters and the ease of spying them in bare earth areas, so the extraterrestrial angle was interesting. In the end, I settled on Amethyst.

As volcanic lava cools, it traps pockets of gas and silica-rich liquid to form Quartz crystals. If the liquid has trace amounts of iron and you wait millions of years, you get the purple-hued Amethyst. There is a background overlay in my piece of a sequential nonrepeating pattern echoing quartz's hexagonal base structure and organic growth. (Also, somewhere in there are some coordinates.)

I can't ignore the labeling of crystals with spiritual significance. It exists for many people. I can't ignore the monetary value put on them either, but I do. To me, unseen secrets below the ground flesh out the detail of the terrain, mimicking the rarity of natural life on the surface. It makes perfect sense to me.

First Edition 2020

I am no expert on the Sonoran Desert; although I live here, and considering a majority of it exists inside of Mexico, which I have camped in about ten times, I'm familiar with the terrain. A few years ago, I did this 3d map of the Pineleño Mountains. Then there was the paleogeographic project I teamed up with a geologist to render the creation of the Gulf of California back to 10 million years. This time, I revisit the map as an art print and an essential part of my upcoming book.

There were a lot of decisions to make during this piece. How much texture, color, include roads, walls, cities, vegetation. Maps aren't maps without bathymetry, which tells the whole story IMO, especially in the gulf where the peninsula has peeled away from the mainland and is on it's way to Alaska. My spacecraft crashed here, and my information screen was on the fritz, and the power supply was waning, so I made some paper and ink and started tracing the screen to save the information.

First Edition 2020

Like the otherworldly biom of the Sky Islands in Southern Arizona, there is another world underground. Thinking about the natural world under our feet, I was inspired by Kartchner Carverns. By happenstance, I was hired to my creative director job by Gary Tenen, co-discoverer and protector of the caverns that eventually became a state park.

The bat seemed a natural fit for this piece. Nesting below ground and hunting outside, no one is more aware of the advantages of cave life in the desert than the bat. Listening to recordings of it's high frequency echo locations, I felt some grunge. Flying through the choppy sound waves to navigate its way through cave chambers and out into the open air, the bat not only helps control insect populations but is integral in the pollination of desert plants.

First Edition 2019

The last ice age pushed into the Sonoran desert and pushed out the Saguaro cactus and the Ironwood trees down to the middle of Mexico and were replaced by Juniper forests and giant sloths. When the cold receded, the Saguaro came back to Arizona thousands of years faster than the Ironwood. Why? Birds. Birds can migrate hundreds or thousands of miles pooping seeds from the Saguaro fruit along the way. Ironwood seeds are eaten and pooped out by pack rats. Pack rats have small domains of a mile or more.

But first, plants need pollinators. In the desert these are bats, insects, and bees. They are genetic networkers for the plants they forage. They will forage up to 4 miles away and periodically, the whole hive will strike out and find a new place to resettle. Which makes me think of computer networks and networking software, site visits (like to a blog), and social media.

Insects with a queen are really one organism. Grouped together, I imagine a hive to be the size of a small dog. A small dog with 10,000 stingers. I've encountered a hive on the move while on the trail. I heard them before I saw them. I always give them space and respect because they can be aggressive. Our bees down here are Africanized, Africanized hybrids, aggressive, but are immune to the fungus that's killing bees elsewhere.

First Edition 2019

The Peregrine falcon is a wide-ranging species and a seasonal migrator, but the Sonoran desert is one place it breeds and calls home all year round. I have some nesting near my office, and at break time, when the wind is flowing over the Tucson Mountains, one of them might kite slow and low over me to take a look. Then there’s that sound effect Hollywood is so fond of.

Out in the desert, circling in long slow arcs among rock towers and dodging dust devils, birds have a different spacial reality than we do — especially the strong fliers of the predatory world. Looking up at them, we’re like the bottom feeders of the sky sea.

In this piece, I was thinking about the layers of air being like floors in a multistory building. I see birds cruising for prey, but sometimes I see them way up there on the top floor, far beyond hunting zones, watching the Earth’s curvature and soaring smoothly on thermals.

First Edition 2019

The first time I heard of the javelina I was riding on horseback when the trail guide started describing a vicious black pig of the desert that would attack cattle and horses. The first time I saw one it ran away. The second time was in a parking lot, wandering around the cars and sniffing around trash cans.

Since those encounters, I happen upon them as a common occurrence on trails and try to keep a calm distance. Once during a dry spell, three large ones walked down my street like a gang of tough guys, unafraid of the urban environment around them.

Most of the time, I’m amazed the Sonoran Desert can support mammals this big, and then remember, this is a green desert compared to others. As a regional character, the javelina is famous, adorning postcards, lawn ornaments, and mailboxes. As a wild animal, it’s tough, crafty, and fearless.

I was thinking about their sense of smell which is way better than their eyesight. That nose helps root out seeds, meats, fruit grasses, and roots. A scent gland on the rear of their back communicates to others. So yeah, I was thinking about navigating by smell in this piece.

First Edition 2018

Coyote is cunning. Coyote is opportunistic. Coyote is curious. Coyote is a hardy survivor like the desert itself, feared and hated by too many. Coyote is the wolf’s brother, and both are the oldest branches of the canine genetic tree.

I can’t help seeing “dogs” when I encounter them. My reaction to them is always awe mixed with a bit of caution. A pack of three moved into an abandoned area near my house. Walking my dog Scout there one day, the coyotes approached. Scout played with one of them like they were puppies. I was amazed how they immediately turned to play. I swiveled around to see the other two carefully moving into a position to circle us. It might have been a defensive strategy, but being out-numbered, I tossed rocks to break up their plan. Another time I was hiking down a wash with Scout. A group of 8 came toward us. I called Scout next to me as the coyotes fanned out, slowing and sniffing as they passed and went on their way.

The eyes and ears of the desert, they want to know who’s coming and going. My piece has a coyote at dusk keeping an eye on the horizon, ears focused, and nose scanning for changes in the air.

First Edition 2018

In the Sonoran Desert, some areas get more rain than others. Around Tucson, the yearly rainfall is 12,” but in the El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar, it’s closer to 3” if any at all. Rain is usually randomly sourced by a Pacific hurricane or tropical storm coming inland to die. Such hardy adaptive plants like the ocotillo growing in an area with less rain may look young but can be more than 100 years.

In between rains, ocotillo dials its’ metabolism down to a crawl and appears to be a bundle of dead, spiny sticks. When rains occur, it springs into action with newly charged batteries by sprouting leaves and bright red torch-like blooms. Pollinators like carpenter bees and hummingbirds are attracted to the blooms.

The piece is in the Gran Desierto de Altar at the foot of the Sierra del Rosario mountains. I was taken by the height of the ocotillos in this area compared to most of the shorter, ground-hugging plants and the sound of wind through their spiny branches.

First Edition 2017

The ancient feeling of the Pinacate Bioreserve surrounds you with its volcanic landscape of black cinder. Yet, in all of the ancientness, the ʻAʻā (Hawaiian term) or rocky cooled lava looks like it just happened yesterday. The lava flows are young, as in 40,000 years young; once molten and unapproachable, they are still a forbidding place to go. With massive piles of car-sized ʻAʻā boulders, steep pits, and a surface that is extremely sharp to the touch, climbing among the lava flows must be done carefully because a misstep would mean certain injury. The going is so challenging I’ve wonder if you tossed something into the center of the flow if it would ever be found.

This piece was about getting into the detail of the rock and being true to its nature. When you get into the details, it’s more like working on an abstract piece, and nature’s abstraction pulls you into the details.

First Edition 2017

Encountering a tarantula (this one is a Mexican Red-kneed) always halts a hike for a dozen minutes or so. They seem so out of place, but you see how much sense their body design makes in the desert. I usually catch them crossing a clear area with a comfortable purpose.

The eyes are tiny and not immediately apparent, so it looks almost as if the furry automaton is feeling its way through the landscape blindly or by some invisible force. This is, in fact, the case. They sense the world around them more through vibration and smelling pheromones than sight.

Right now, it’s safe to talk about Spider Grandmother under the webbed sky laced with stars because it’s “the season when Thunder sleeps.”

First Edition 2016

The Mohave Rattlesnake is the most venomous and hottest to strike of snakes in the Sonoran Desert. That being said, her symbiotic relationship with rodents is immeasurably important to the ecosystem. She’s just doing her job very well.

With this piece, I was thinking about margins and targets: Margins of the senses, margins of territory, margins of safety, and margins breached by predator and prey. Desert territories are filled with targets of seed-bearing plants and rodent trails. Security means staying outside the margins and sometimes below the ground’s surface. I imagine these invisible zones growing and shrinking from minute to minute as creatures hunt and hide. Plants set up slower seasonal margins of fruiting and flowering and are home to birds, lizards, insects, and rodents. If you can see these invisible margins, you realize the dynamic interconnectedness of the desert biome.

First Edition 2016

Meeting an antelope hare is like meeting a humble ambassador of the desert. A tall, slender running machine with long, alert ears constantly scanning. Their considerable size has startled me more than once as I think a dog is sitting there perfectly still. Maybe a greyhound? Creosote bushes are a perfectly-to-scale forest with plenty of room between bushes for multiple getaways. Heavily predated, they run, hide and breed with great proficiency.

There is something mysterious about the rabbits and hares, not as much a sense of distrust but an inner alert and meditative wisdom. I thought about this stately way of being near the bottom of the food chain, its strategy of multiple escape plans, and a zig-zag getaway move to throw predators off the trail.

First Edition 2016

Every late spring in the Southwest, there is great celebration centered around the night-blooming cereus. There is a great variety, including the Queen of the Night, which blooms only once a year. Catching these lotus-like blooms on their special night is a real treat.

Blooming at night makes sense when your primary pollinator is bats. The specimen depicted in my piece resides in my backyard. This succulent spreads out low along the ground, usually under shrubs or trees. It’s not a Queen of the Night and blooms multiple times a year.

I was thinking about the tissue paper-thin petals unfolding in the moonlight, the first light to reflect from their pure whiteness. I was thinking about the timing of moon cycles and the quiet glowing shadows it bestows on the ground. In the background of the piece are a target, personal space symbols, and a dotted diagram of moon craters. Started as a daylight piece; this one came together nicely with nighttime lighting.

First Edition 2016

If you climb to a high elevation in the Southwest, the long unobstructed views and water path through the landscape are apparent. Arroyos (usually dry intermittent streams) fan out over the valleys like winding organic veins on their way downstream. This creates a beautiful fluvial fractalesque design resulting from multiple millennia of erosion. In this piece, I really wanted to express that texture.

Down here, mountains/mountain ranges are called “Sky Islands” (so... Islix). This is a section of the Pineleño range in southeast Arizona. Every biom from alpine to desert can be experienced hiking from top to bottom. Mountains produce a lot of precipitation which races down into the valleys, and that’s when the infamous flash floods happen. Being the desert, they are usually dry, and if you’re hiking, you’re most likely hiking in an arroyo.

I’m now doing work that most resembles artwork I did in school. I practiced a lot of etching, loved the black line, and was fascinated with ruled lines, map markers, and vaguely science-like notations. I’ve always liked that bird silhouette you find in bird identification books. Looking back, I can see how pure those etchings were. It takes a long time to find yourself, and sometimes the path takes you on a big loop.

First Edition 2016

While hiking through the desert, the dull ring of silence may only break by the gravel crunching under your boots. Even if nothing seems to move, you will undoubtedly encounter a hummingbird first hearing its high-pitched tweets.

In this piece, I was thinking of a couple of things. One is the bird’s constant role as a pollinator. “X” marking the spots on a daily treasure map of flowing plants. Another is the maneuverability and miracle of its hovering flight, not to mention the iridescent ruby pink throat of Anna’s Hummingbird. Wings flapping at twice the speed of any other bird with 360 degrees of vision and energy enough to stay in flight for 50 minutes at a time. Imagine the invisible swirls of air currents churned up around it. The tiny squeaky chirp makes up the frame represented by the graphic sound waves you might find in an audio program.

First Edition 2015

With this piece, I wanted to zoom into some close-up subject matter. There isn’t any creature more desert classic than the Gila Monster. Using abstract techniques can render the round scales of the lizard and the lichen pocked rock beneath, but I opted for visual complexity. Visual complexity adds emphasis like the intricate textures of a remembered dream. More for the brain to chew on. More for the brain to find and connect with.

I was taken by the plotting of the scales on its skin, arranging themselves in a hexagonal pattern like a sci-fi artificial life-form, not noticing this until I started drawing it. I started to see a relationship between the geometries of landscape and the Gila Monster navigating cell by cell through a hive of rock; thus, the hexagon matrix overlay. When you move so close to the ground, there must be some sense of direction more than searching the horizon, so I included a futuristic compass at its side for easy reference. A caution barred warning triangle in the upper right labels the subject’s dangerous bite. Truly the dragon of the desert.

First Edition 2015

The Cardón, Mexican Giant Cardón, Elephant Cactus, you get the idea; it’s a giant cactus. Similar to the Saguaro but with branching much like a tree. I camped on the edge of a Cardón forest, hanging out in their shade or wandering among them along the shore of the Gulf of California at Punto Cirio in Sonora, Mexico.

Considering it can take 75-100 years for a Saguaro to grow one arm, I marveled at these giants’ age and castle-like presence. When I came across this particular one, I spent a lot of time circling and photographing it. A quarter-mile from the shoreline, I imagined what processes shape its’ life. Sun, intermittent breezes and stormy gales from the sea, desert/sea birds living among its branches, and nightly the Milky Way slowly spinning through the sky. That’s what hooked me, this creature’s sense of time as it moves through the seasons and its distant relationship with the ageless cosmos. A diagram of the Milky Way superimposed on the background seemed appropriate.

First Edition 2015

The Pinacate region of Mexico is so unique in the Sonoran Desert that I think I’ll be doing several pieces from the area. Ancient volcanic lava flows created ridges and eddies in the landscape, forming little walled gardens. Roaming through them is like being in the backyard of a master gardener.

I was struck by the strength and royal presence of the Senita Cactus. It’s interesting how the bottom of the stems crawl away from the center, lying on the ground and pushing up. It’s weird, but it looks like it’s very comfortable on the desert floor.

Following this ancient sci-fi aesthetic, I used slow arcing arrows to mimic the sense of growing up and out and the circulation of life force around the cactus. I’m trying to be subtle with this commentary because the true focus is nature itself.

First Edition 2014

In Mexico, I’m camping on this other-worldly lava flow, imagining targets, portals, and interdimensional travels. Life symbols surround earth symbols in a star chart. In the landscape, saguaros seem like measured cosmic guideposts, mountain ranges gauging descent altitude, and clouds billow from the exchange of energy between galactic locations.

This fantasy of looking through the windscreen of an interstellar ship with targeting overlays has me thinking about screen interface in art: controls, symbols, and maps with hidden meaning. I catch myself dreaming of punching radio buttons, pulling scroll bars, and watching lines of code spill into the screen. Is it possible that a single guidebook image could include enough symbols to convey data that otherwise would take paragraphs of writing in just a glance?

First Edition 2014

I’ve been working with some graphic symbols from a vector-based automatic writing set of sessions. Thinking about letters, sigils, and symbols and am exploring their meaning more specifically now. Are they part of a larger symbology, a mandelic pantheon of universal balance, or a personal psychological system like tarot? The world-building has begun.

The symbols used in this one are geologic, stone, and earth-like. A cube shape has been haunting me, so I built one using the symbols themselves. Could it be a 3-dimensional sentence, a set of dice, or keys turned to access another realm? I want to explore this concept further. I keep tuning in to an “Ancient Future” feeling with a lot of juice and scurrying down the rabbit hole after it.

I worked from a photo I took while riding a helicopter out of Havasu Falls, a tributary of the Grand Canyon. I listened to Kafkaesque, an hour-long ambient drone piece of music by artist Soul in Limbo, on infinite repeat while working on it. So, I guess that might be the soundtrack.

For Future Book "Codex Tranquility"

When summoned, this book appears to those ready to study out of thin air. Filled with abstract patterns, complex diagrams, strange creatures, and indecipherable text, the reader comes away with a sense of calm they can call upon for the rest of their life.

For Future Book "Codex Tranquility"

When summoned, this book appears to those ready to study out of thin air. Filled with abstract patterns, complex diagrams, strange creatures, and indecipherable text, the reader comes away with a sense of calm they can call upon for the rest of their life.

For Future Book "Codex Tranquility"

When summoned, this book appears to those ready to study out of thin air. Filled with abstract patterns, complex diagrams, strange creatures, and indecipherable text, the reader comes away with a sense of calm they can call upon for the rest of their life.

For Future Book "Codex Tranquility"

When summoned, this book appears to those ready to study out of thin air. Filled with abstract patterns, complex diagrams, strange creatures, and indecipherable text, the reader comes away with a sense of calm they can call upon for the rest of their life.

For Future Book "Codex Tranquility"

When summoned, this book appears to those ready to study out of thin air. Filled with abstract patterns, complex diagrams, strange creatures, and indecipherable text, the reader comes away with a sense of calm they can call upon for the rest of their life.

For Future Book "Codex Tranquility"

When summoned, this book appears to those ready to study out of thin air. Filled with abstract patterns, complex diagrams, strange creatures, and indecipherable text, the reader comes away with a sense of calm they can call upon for the rest of their life.

For Future Book "Codex Tranquility"

When summoned, this book appears to those ready to study out of thin air. Filled with abstract patterns, complex diagrams, strange creatures, and indecipherable text, the reader comes away with a sense of calm they can call upon for the rest of their life.

For Future Book "Codex Tranquility"

When summoned, this book appears to those ready to study out of thin air. Filled with abstract patterns, complex diagrams, strange creatures, and indecipherable text, the reader comes away with a sense of calm they can call upon for the rest of their life.

For Future Book "Codex Tranquility"

When summoned, this book appears to those ready to study out of thin air. Filled with abstract patterns, complex diagrams, strange creatures, and indecipherable text, the reader comes away with a sense of calm they can call upon for the rest of their life.

For Future Book "Codex Tranquility"

When summoned, this book appears to those ready to study out of thin air. Filled with abstract patterns, complex diagrams, strange creatures, and indecipherable text, the reader comes away with a sense of calm they can call upon for the rest of their life.