I feel I have come full circle with this landscape series, where the spirit of the sky and the foundations of the earth come together to dance in the light.

Some of my earliest memories are of the pungent smells of the eucalyptus trees in the dry river-washes of the Choachella Valley, and the loud, incessant, electric-buzzing of the locusts' humming, thick in the hot, still aromatic-air–the relentless heat of the afternoon sun rising like shimmering waves off the red and ochre earth and the sage-scorched dunes. I can remember the blanched-yellow sky of the noon with the fire-ants scrambling for cover. I remember the blazing red, magenta-orange light of the sunsets; the purple-grey-green skies of dusk, with the coyotes calling in the dark-blue hills; and I can recall the silver-indigo cloak of night reaching out beyond the Milky Way, with the echo of a train's whistle floating far across the lonely, timeless dream of night.

My father's people are Basque, Spanish, and Mestizo; they were shepherds, ranchers, and farmers, living close to the earth in the central Chihuahua desert, under big skies with vast horizons.

My mother's people are Scotch, Irish, and Anglo farmers, ranchers, and merchants; settlers from the east, they migrated in covered-wagons, across the great-plains of the western prairies and settled in the California desert of sage-mountains and salt-lakes.

My people are the people of the earth: Mestizo and Anglo farmers; the dispossessed: Basque and Irish immigrants; the bold and restless: Scottish and Spanish explorers. I am the roots of two great continents, I am the savage and the orphaned child, I am the conqueror searching for my lost soul, and the conquered rising from the ashes in radiance, hope, and joy...