Strata Series

Just before I turned forty, I went to Denver, Colorado for an art educators’ national convention. On one of the days there, I went on a city tour in the morning and then a mountain tour in the evening. It was on the mountain tour I had a chance to see where giant red rocks pushed through the ground. I also saw petrified dinosaur bones embedded in another area. Also, there was an area that used to be the sea floor - including fossils of sea creatures. When I came back from the trip, I became interested in a strata motif.


watercolor on paper, 8 pieces, 7 1/2" x 11"

Here I was turning forty. It seemed like a good symbolic way of representing the milestone. Anyway I did strata painting for our Contemporary Art Center. It was having a fundraiser in which each artist was given a postcard size piece of paper and asked to make it into an art postcard. I wish I had taken a picture of it. Anyway, that was the first one I made.

I did these larger strata paintings after that and got stuck. One of my students said they looked like wallpaper. That’s what put me into a rut. How do I get them away from them just being a dull repeating pattern. Anyway it’s been a good three years since I began these. I just have to finish them. Then the nest trick will be framing them.