By means of abstraction, the Nature Under Glass series reveals the minutia that scaffolds humankind inside the various environments enveloping it. This elemental encounter with artifacts of our ecology informs the eye of messages too small to read.  An individual painting in this series is a constituent of the sequential strand of encounters from quark to proton, feet to grass, and outwards to a universe of expansive intervals between bits of matter. To map these relationships is to recognize the sustaining substance of all microcosms underlying our persistent moments.

I detect a diminishment in our experiences when I look outside my canvas at these interrelations. Eliciting tactile acquaintances with these details in relief, I feel a buoyant spirit that holds everything together, whether it is grass, moss, or fossil. Responding to the world of living landscapes’ need for care and protection, I seal my painted microcosms under a hermetic blanket of refuge.

The Nature Under Glass Series preceded Cambrian Explosion. Both series have roots in Elisabeth Vedrine’s sense of the fragility and wonder of the natural world. The Cambrian Explosion refers to a period in Earth’s history when many new species of plants and animals arose in a short time period. Nature Under Glass expresses her sense that the natural world as we know it may be known to our children only through museum exhibits, separated from direct experience by a layer of glass.