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Artist's Statement: Aquifer
Not only are the springs a source of great sustenance from their beauty and recreational activities, but the aquifer is also the main water supply for the state. The springs have been valued throughout history for their medicinal qualities. These are always felt, but seldom documented. I have been visiting the springs for many years, as a transfixed observer, an ardent snorkeler, traveler into the transformed world of the springs, and a painter. Many of my paintings take a section of the color and depth of one of the many flamboyantly colored springs like Fanning, Peacock or Manatee, and extent it to create a painting, suggesting the experience of being in the springs. The boundaries are not defined, but the essence of the color and light, and a suggestion of the depth, are. I often depict them as being continuous, from one painting to the next, like the waters of the aquifer, minimizing the differences between them. I am fascinated by the connection between artist and nature in plain air painting; almost all of the paintings are begun as I sit, stand, or float at the springs.
For this new body of work I choose to depict the Springs as singular self-contained units. This series also references the "many worlds" theory of physics, where there is not one universe, but many, separate and complete, less part of a whole than a whole unto themselves. In fact it is in the peculiar reality of the Springs that one limited entity can imply the existence of many others. In the magical structure of the karst rocks with emanations of the aquifer, Springs can simultaneously be discrete and be part of the larger whole. Thus the installation of the Springs Mosaic represents singular springs boils though which the acquifer emerges, and the animal and aquatic life that inhabits them, as part of a larger complex whole of many of these small Springs. "
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"The surface of most of the state of Florida is a thin covering of earth over limestone mantle. Ground water seeps into this porous mantle through openings as minute as grains of sand, or as large as sinkholes, that occasionally open spontaneously and swallow up houses and cars. It percolates through to deep subterranean canyons and channels hundreds of feet below the surface, where it mingles with other waters, coursing underground for years or decades. When it emerges and comes to the surface in the waters of a spring, it is the temperature of the earth it came from, 72-74 degrees. Sometimes the headspring is a deep crevice of enormous boulders, filled with brilliantly colored water, sometimes the water bubbles up through small pools of sand called sandboils.