The paintings in this series are about the chance arrangements that occur when trees and skies collide. The skies are fleeting moments held briefly by the arms of the trees. Many of the trees represented are not indigenous to Southern California and have been pruned and shaped for domestic and farming purposes. 

The following is a quote from a book entitled “All the Little Live Things” by Wallace Stegner written in 1967.

                                                 “I admire the natural, and I hate the miscalled improvements
                                                  that spread like impetigo into the hills. But who can pretend
                                                  that the natural and the idyllic are the same? The natural is
                                                  often imperfect, and Homo fabricans, of whom I am one, is
                                                  eager to perfect it. So I clean it up and grub out its poison
                                                  oak and spray for its insect pests and plant things that bear
                                                  blossoms instead of burrs, and make it all Arcadian and
                                                  delightful, and all I do is help jar loose a tax increase, bring on
                                                  roads and power lines, stir up the real-estate sharpies, and get
                                                  the hills cut up with roads and building lots.  All is woe, with
                                                  loss of Eden.”