My Watershed paintings are inspired by the incongruity of the man-made detritus I find washed up on the otherwise pristine shores near my studio on Discovery Bay in Washington State. In this series I take a light-hearted yet subversive approach to the serious subject of ocean degradation.

For example, in my large-scale oil painting, Have an Ice Day, 2015 ( first image below) depicts a tattered plastic party-ice bag sporting the cartoonish graphic of a polar bear floating in limbo over the sea. The party-ice in this bag has long since vanished, just as the ice cubes illustrated on the bag are melting out from under the sunglass-clad ice-bear as he poignantly waves good-bye; a parting metaphor for the potential of mass extinction in the warming and disappearing habitats of the globe.

Painting traditionally with oil and gouache, I lovingly and meticulously craft beautiful images of conventionally ugly beach cast-offs, aiming to create a provocative visual juxtaposition of form and idea. As synthetic castaways from grocery shelf life proudly and cheerily proclaim “natural” rights on our shores, gyres of plastic swirl in the oceans of the world, and plastic becomes the new sand.