"A Season Come and Gone," a Horizontal Acrylic Painting

In This Season is a celebration of childhood. There are few things in life that we get to experience twice, but childhood is one of them – as children ourselves and then as parents.

I don't remember exactly when my little girl began bringing me things she found in the yard, but she was very very young. My little sister was a flower picker too, and it struck me as sweet and a little funny that they both went through this phase. About a year ago, I started photographing the things she brought to me.

The photos I took were so random – sometimes a lovely posy of wildflowers, sometimes a couple of blades of grass or a dry twig – I had no idea how I would create a collection from it. Then I started selecting surfaces – stained papers and canvases, a stray stroke or spatter of paint from living in the studio, formed the backdrops for thin acrylic and pigment washes beneath the flowers. This collection is as soft as memory, playful as childhood itself. The paintings — playful, whimsical, and a little messy, feels like a perfect metaphor for life with small children.