Like many of us in March of 2020, I was unemployed and looking for work after the lockdown began in Kansas City. Fortunately, I found employment and a newfound fascination for houseplants and perennials working at a nursery. Being immersed in this new environment allowed me to experience the therapeutic energy plants have that I’ve been isolated from living in a midwestern city. Many species of houseplants that are kept as indoor specimens are ones I grew up seeing outside in their natural tropical climate of South Florida. I was reminded of my Hispanic heritage, not in the cultural sense but through the tropical landscape and the natural environment in which these organisms exist. In some way I am reclaiming what I took for granted in my youth.

Through this body of work, I am exploring my connection to the landscape through pictures, memory, and houseplant specimens. The images painted on the surfaces of my vessels represent a dialogue between the plants I see day to day and the memories of plants seen in years past. I refer to old family pictures and recall the shrubs and palm trees in the backyard of my childhood home along with houseplants I have at home. I process that dialogue by combining abstracted and naturalistic images of these plants painted in bright colors that imply their tropical essence.