Why Real Sedona Earth Is in These Paintings

Art made with Sedona earth means exactly what it says: real soil, carried back and set into the surface of the painting, so the place is physically present in the work rather than painted to look like it. In my Material works, that earth lives alongside resin, mineral, and glass, layered until it becomes part of the piece itself. So when you stand in front of one, you are not looking at a picture of a landscape. You are looking at a little of the ground it came from.

I want to tell you why I do it this way, because it is the thing collectors ask me about most, and it is the part I love talking about.

What does it mean for real earth to be in a painting?

Most landscape art points at a place. It borrows the color of the light, the shape of the rock, the mood of an afternoon, and it hands you back a beautiful likeness. That is a real and wonderful tradition, and I have nothing but respect for it.

What I am after is a little different. I want the place to actually be in the piece, not represented but present. So the earth I use is real earth, gathered by hand and brought back to the studio, then worked into the surface with resin, mineral, and glass until it belongs there. The grit you sense is grit. The warmth in the tone is the tone the ground already had. Nothing is standing in for anything else.

Why does that matter to a collector?

Because it changes what you are living with. A painting that merely depicts a place can be lovely on the wall and still stay at arm's length. A piece that holds the place inside it does something quieter and more lasting. It carries presence. On a bright morning the mineral catches, and by late afternoon the same surface has gone deep and slow, and both of those are the work being honest about what it is made of.

I think that is why these pieces tend to hold people. There is only ever one of each, and the material inside it cannot be reprinted, matched, or ordered again. That is not a marketing line. It is simply true of ground that was gathered once, on one day, and set down for good.

Is the Sedona earth really from Sedona?

Yes, genuinely, and I name it plainly for a reason. The earth in these works comes from Sedona, and Sedona is the source of the material, nothing more and nothing less. It is where the ground was carried back from, not a studio, not an address, not a place I am pointing you toward. The name belongs to the earth in the piece, and I keep it honest so that the word on the label always matches what is actually in your hands.

That honesty is really a form of provenance. When you acquire one of these, I can tell you what is in it and where the earth was gathered, because I gathered it. The story starts in the studio and it starts with me, which is exactly where I think the story of a one-of-a-kind piece should start. You can see how this line of work holds together across the Sedona Earth collection, where the material itself is the through line from piece to piece.

How do resin, mineral, and glass work with the earth?

They give the earth somewhere to live. Resin holds and deepens, catching light and locking the surface into something you can keep for a lifetime. Mineral and glass bring the glint and the shift, the way a real hillside is never one flat color but a hundred small ones depending on the hour. Layered together, they let the earth read as earth while the whole surface stays luminous.

None of it is decoration laid on top. Each material is doing structural work, holding the place in and giving it a way to keep speaking on your wall long after the day you first brought it home. If a certain palette or a certain feeling of ground is what you are drawn to, that is often the beginning of a conversation about a piece made with a particular stretch of earth in mind.

The place, kept

That is really the whole heart of it. These works let you keep a place, not a picture of a place, and greater Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Paradise Valley collectors have been the ones who understand that fastest, because they know this ground already. When the earth is genuinely in the surface, the piece stops being about somewhere else and becomes its own quiet fact in your home.

If one of these has stayed with you, I would love to hear from you and tell you exactly what is inside it. The warmest way to stay close to the Material works is to join my Collector's Circle, where I share new pieces, and the earth they hold, before they go out into the world.