My interest in the natural world of the plant kingdom has been a lifelong fascination. I can remember sitting in my grandparents' garden in Chicago as a young child sketching the many types of flowers, vegetables and wild strawberry plants that grew there and from that point have never tired of recapturing the same child-like wonder in creating my works of art. My love of nature deepened in the woods of Wisconsin where each Summer, with my family, we camped upon forty acres of forested land.