This painting was created as one of six in a suite, Shifting Coastlines. While our world is changing dramatically under the effects of global warming, the seductive beauty of the world will never change.

The idea of making something small very big is a well-trod idea in the plastic arts. It is hard not to look at something that is big. Pearl takes this idea as a starting point: Georgia O'Keefe said she wanted us to really look at flowers, so she painted them large. Once there is expansive real estate to work within, a painting can present much more than simple documentation of what the eyes are seeing. Here I'm suggesting a rich lake of energy - which there certainly needs to be to create a pearl. An interior river of color that kisses the pearl as it grows; the energies of light and dark that imbue it with its pearly essence. I don't really know how a pearl is made - maybe scientists are also lacking this information. But the fact that they are made is wonder enough.

Oil on canvas, 60" diameter.

It is truly extraordinary that a simple bi-valve creature creates pearls when small irritants enter their inner place.