Hello friends,

There's a particular quality to the light in early September—lower, more golden, arriving at an angle it didn't have in August.

I keep going back to the coast these last few weeks. Something in me knows the season is closing before the calendar does. And that quiet urgency—the sense that a long stretch of light and time is about to give way to something else—has done more for my studio output than any deadline I could set myself. There's a kind of superpower in being able to see the horizon of a season. I've used every bit of mine this summer.

I didn't invent this feeling, and neither did you, if you're noticing it too.

The pull toward urgency, toward finishing, toward taking stock—it isn't a personality trait or a productivity trick. It's older than that.

It's the same rhythm every living thing in the northern hemisphere is moving through right now: shortening days triggering something in birds preparing to migrate, in trees beginning to pull their green back inward, in animals storing what they'll need before the season turns. We come from that same nature. Of course we feel it too.

Late summer has always been a hinge point—half harvest, half farewell. It asks two things of us at once: finish what you started, and look honestly at how the year has gone.

Not critically, but the way you'd walk a garden in September—noting what grew, what didn't take, what needs different soil next time. There are still four months left in this year. Plenty of room left to act on what this season is showing you.

 Last light over water · September 2026

These four paintings aren't new.

They're from my current collection, Held by Light—each one 12 x 12 inches, built from layered washes of warm gold beneath quiet passages of water, color, and dusk.

I'm bringing them back into view this week because they seem to belong here, in this particular conversation about the season. They hold, almost exactly, the quality of light we've been talking about—the kind that arrives right before everything changes.

They're available now on my website.

Ten percent of proceeds from this collection go to Adopt-A-Native-Elder (A.N.E.), which supports traditional Elders living on the Navajo Reservation.

So here's what I keep coming back to, whether I'm at the table or sitting in the sand:

Hello Friends,

Lately, I’ve been thinking about what I really mean when I talk about observing nature.

For me, observation is not simply looking closely at the sky, the sea, or the changing atmosphere of a place. It is more about witnessing it fully—being present and open to whatever is there, without expecting it to be different.

There is a kind of acceptance in that.

The weather does not need to be dramatic. The light does not need to be beautiful. The ocean does not need to be calm. A place does not have to offer me the scene I imagined when I arrived.

It simply is what it is at that particular moment.

And my work is to simply witness.

These two new paintings, Where the Weather Turns and Tide Moving Through, grew out of that way of looking. They are part of my current collection, Between Water and Sky, which explores the shifting boundary between atmosphere and water—places shaped by weather, distance, light, and movement.

I find that the same kind of attention continues once I begin to paint.

Watercolor has its own nature.

I can choose the pigments, decide where to place the water, make a mark or tilt the paper—but I cannot completely determine what happens next. Pigments meet and blend in unexpected ways. Some move toward one another. Some separate. Water travels farther than I intended, or stops just short of where I thought it would go.

There is always a balance between directing the painting and allowing the painting to direct me.

The more I work with watercolor, the less interested I am in controlling every part of that process. I want to leave enough room for the materials to behave as themselves—for water to move like water and pigment to settle, separate, mingle, or resist.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons painting and being in nature feel so closely connected to me.

Thank you for following along and for making space for these paintings in your week.