If you've landed here, chances are you've seen one of my paintings and had one of two reactions:

"I love this!"

...or...

"What on earth am I looking at?"

Honestly, both are perfectly reasonable.

Over the years I've filled sketchbooks, paintings, sculptures, and comics with striped worms, wandering souls, masquerading goldfish, mushroom castles, and one unfortunate girl with a watermelon growing from her head. At first they were simply strange little drawings that made me smile. But as I kept drawing them, I realized they all belonged to the same place.

This isn't a world I sat down and invented all at once. It grew slowly from childhood memories of the Berkshire woods and waters, old Scottish castles, afternoons spent poking water spiders and popping jewelweed seed pods, and a lifelong habit of wondering what might be living just beyond the cattails.

So, if you've ever looked at one of my paintings and thought, "What the heck is going on here?" you're in the right place.

Welcome to the world that's been living in my head all along.

My work takes place in a whimsical world that exists alongside our own, inspired by the ponds, streams, lakes and forests of my childhood in the Berkshires with some of my earliest childhood memories of Scotland thrown in. It’s not a fantasy world built around battles or kingdoms. It’s a world about nature, curiosity, creativity, transformation, and the different ways people choose to value the living things around them.

One of the main inhabitants is a species I call the wandering souls. They began as simple sketchbook doodles and became the subject of many paintings and eventually, paper mache sculptures. They have long striped, worm-like bodies connected to either a large eyeball or a smooth, shiny black orb. Most have long flowing red hair, but they can also take on forms inspired by different animals, such as alpacas, emus, turtles, or birds. They hover, float, slither, or fly silently through the landscape, watching over the world like Mother Nature's dash cams. They aren't exactly ghosts or spirits of the dead. They're simply another stage of life.

The wandering souls began as little worms, playful, curious creatures that represent youth and the active part of life. They can squeeze through tiny spaces, especially little mushroom holes, they can remove sections of their striped bodies to use as tools, wheels, bridges, or toys, and freely give or trade those pieces with one another. The worms possess unique internal cross-sections. If you slice a segment of the worm, the flat part is always a surprise. It could look like just about anything - a slice of citrus fruit, the rim of a tire, or a piece of a California roll... Also, they can't die. They spend their time exploring, inventing, and playing, which they can (and may) do with reckless abandon. But usually they’re pretty calm creatures who just like to cook and build things.

When a worm is finally ready, a mature wandering soul comes to it like a nurturing mother. The worm is enclosed in a fuzzy cocoon that hangs from a tree deep in the forest, filling the woods with soft lantern-like lights at night. Eventually it emerges as a wandering soul, beginning an eternal stage of quiet observation. Wandering souls are not ghosts or spirits of the dead. They are simply the final, but eternal stage of life. They hover silently above the world, watching over everything like Mother Nature’s hidden lenses. Unlike the worms, who ignore conventional rules and squeeze through mushroom holes or impossible spaces, wandering souls have become patient and sophisticated, choosing to enter through doors and windows.

The worms are close friends with the masquerading goldfish, another group of creatures that has been with me since childhood in some way, shape or form. The goldfish love creativity, performance, and celebration. Lacking true goldfish faces, they wear elaborate Venetian Carnival masks that conceal the single green eye beneath. They feel that the masks give them more personality and confidence, which allows them to have more fun!

The goldfish build their costumes and decorations almost entirely from discarded human objects combined with materials they forage from nature. Bottle caps, fishing line, feathers, glass, and other forgotten things become beautiful masks and costumes. Where humans see trash, the goldfish see possibilities.

They also love putting on circus performances and building rides throughout the forests and marshes. Roller coasters twist through the trees on living vines, while worms happily become loops, wheels, and tightropes to help with performances. The carnival isn't a permanent place but something the creatures create together whenever they feel like celebrating.

The only human who can see this hidden world is Wanda, a character from a story I wrote in college. After eating the last watermelon in town and swallowing the very last seed, she grows a watermelon on a vine from her head. Thinking the townspeople would think she was a freak, she tried to hide it, but when they saw it they all tried to take it away from her. It grows too big and crashes to the ground. The townspeople try swallowing seeds themselves, hoping to grow fruits and vegetables from their own heads. Rather than appreciating them, they begin selling these strange plant offspring at the farmers market. Wanda finds the whole idea sad and disturbing, almost like selling babies. Through Wanda, the human world represents greed, waste, and the desire to turn everything into a commodity. But her watermelon was special, it gave her the ability to see the creatures that have always existed alongside humans… the Wandering Souls.

Many of the creatures, on the other hand, simply create because it's enjoyable. They make things to play with, to decorate, and to help one another.

One of the oldest figures in the world is a giant wandering soul whose striped body rises from a marshy pond filled with lily pads while her smooth black orb head hovers above the clouds. Goldfish swim around her snakelike body beneath the water's surface. It is said, that if someone climbs all the way up and places their hands upon her head, they might absorb all of the world’s wisdom.

More than anything, this world is about wonder, creativity, transformation, connection, and the quiet magic hidden in ordinary places. It asks what might happen if nature, imagination, and play were more important than ownership, greed, or consumption.