The Old Growth Project began with a walk in the woods — specifically in Prairie Creek and Redwood National Park in Humboldt County — and a desire to grow more intimate with my home in Northern California, especially as the climate changes before my eyes. These paintings are artifacts of a relationship-building practice. They may appear tree-like, but they also hold the stories, experiences, and learnings that emerged over two years of research and making.

The process relies on LiDAR scanning technology, which I run on my iPhone while hiking in the forest. The app chokes on the chaos of old growth — it can't handle the height of the trees or the dense plant life, producing broken, distorted models full of noise. I find them deeply provocative. For me, they embody our disordered relationship with the more-than-human world.

Back in the studio, I manipulate the models until multiple views capture the energies of the trees, then combine them as the foundation for large-scale paintings on Yupo paper. The works read monumentally from a distance while appearing delicate and mycelial up close — that density a reflection of the fungal networks that sustain old-growth forests. Moving between the two is part of the experience.