RETICULATE CONCERTO

Painted for Tom, Barbara, Emme, Patty and Sam who visited Bath and England from Berkeley, California. Tom studies mycorrhizal fungi and evolutionary trees. The painting picks up these themes and associates aspects of Bath and England with aspects of North America and California. A Boletus reticulatus fruit body, with organ-pipe tubes, Berkeley hillside cap and Golden Gate Bridge over fog-strewn Bay, emerges out of a forest network tapped into by Indian pipe plants and broken into by fire and poison oak. Redwood columns emerge from the network, supporting a fan-vaulting of least parsimonious branches conjoined by the Gorgon’s Head of Sulis Minerva. Yosemite waterfall and oak moss lichen cascade between the columns. Yosemite valley stretches into the distance, the deep blue sky given point by a passing turkey vulture. A real-life internet connection.