Thoughts about this new book began with the beautiful intaglio prints created for a much earlier book, A Child's Enchanted Garden, which spoke to the garden’s beauty above ground. These illustrations inspired me to consider a book dealing with the wonders below ground.

 

I learned about the potential for producing digital collages on the computer while working on my most recent book, Drawn into the Garden. Until then, I had created only traditional collages using physical materials – paper, paints, and photographs. The idea of combining very traditional and cutting-edge computer approaches was intriguing  to me, offering many new possibilities.

 

For me, this is an entirely different way of illustrating. While my friend, Stefan Cremers, digitally reproduced and combined the images on the computer, I continued to experiment with enriching the soil in my garden and researching the loss of the world’s topsoil. It was encouraging to learn more about the many people who are energetically and creatively working to help solve this catastrophe.

 

This book project took almost three years to complete. As the soil itself, each image consists of many layers, all important parts of nature’ s magnificent web of life.

 

Below you can see an example combining prints and paintings.