I stood in the forest and closed my eyes to see a family of elk drifting through the aspen glades and pausing for a moment at some forgotten stone wall. This is usually where the idea starts: when I am on a hike or some snowy adventure or standing waist-deep in a river. Once I get the vision in my head, I trap it there and then try to transfer it to paper as quickly as possible. When I came across the remnants of a moss-covered stone wall next to a picturesque brook at the edge of a farm field, I wondered: how many animals have crossed this way? How many animals have paused here, just like I’m pausing, to study the forest around? Back at my studio desk, I penciled out an answer to those questions in the form of aspens and elk. Once the image was sketched, I gathered up handfuls of brushes and cups of paint and began adding the rest of the ingredients.

Learn more about the collage process.