The Rocks series explores our perception of man-made structures and the natural world.  As an artist, I spend a lot of time looking at my surroundings. These observations often find their way into my work. My focus is on the connection between the natural and the built environment, and the effect of light and shadow on how we see. Rocks started with looking at natural stone walls. I was fascinated by how the spaces between the stones create a pattern of shadows.  Looking at the stones led me to think about how masons use rocks harvested from the ground to build these walls.  I married man-made and natural elements by layering drawings of the dark spaces in stone walls over photographs of rocky landscapes. By combining photographs and drawings, I move from realism to creating what I see in my mind’s eye. Taking visual elements out of their original context highlights how light and shadow affect our perception of the landscape. As I developed this series, I pictured my stone wall drawings overtaking rocky landscapes. Shooting the landscapes in bright sunlight created another pattern of shadows on the rocks. Layering the images allowed me to find a continuity of movement and pattern between the drawings and the photographs. This combination results in the altered landscapes that I imagined.