What makes a place home? Is it a structure? A fenced-in acreage by a river? Is it your country of birth? Streets you know without a map? Or is it less tangible? Is it a certain color of sky that comes only during summer storms? Is it the smell of crushed sage? The sound of migrating geese or the hum of street lamps in a snowy city? Is it a person? A community? Is it something internal that doesn't move or change even as you do? Is it a larger sense of connection, a limitless belonging?

I am fascinated with how people come to know, celebrate and cherish their own home, and the way this varies from person to person and culture to culture. Beginning three months ago, I traveled to Iceland and Northern Norway where I spent two and a half months roaming with intention and doing work exchanges on farms and homesteads. During these months I made a practice of sketching, painting and writing about my understanding of the nature of home as it was informed by my experiences in these foreign landscapes and cultures.

In this series of paintings I use watercolors to try to capture the feel of a region I stayed in from one week to one month in Iceland and Norway, as well as the Cascades.  I tried to be as permeated as possible by these places. I reminded myself to be attentive to the way these places resound, feeling my own scale within the grand mountains and fjords, aspiring to receive whatever the land was telling me. 

These paintings in tandem with this selection of poems produce a multi-sensory impression of these particular landscapes and the sense of belonging or “at-home-ness” I experienced there. The poems I have selected were written while I was traveling, and re-worked during this creative residency. The goal of this project has not been focused on the final outcome, but instead on honoring the creative process. I attempt to capture fleeting but focused memories and sensations and play with the ambiguity between elements of water, wind, ice, and land, creating a new two-dimensional environment for the viewer to inhabit as they use their own understanding of a landscape to experience these paintings.

My utmost gratitude to NCI for hosting me as a creative resident and giving me a platform for this project.