Conversations with Nature – From the Garden

Gardening and Synesthesia: How Nature Can Improve Your Color Sense

I thought I had good color sense before I began gardening. I’m an artist, a designer. I can paint. I know how to combine colors for aesthetic or emotional effect. I have good visual intuition about color relationships. But it’s only now, after I’ve begun gardening, and spending hours in Nature, that I realize myContinue reading “Gardening and Synesthesia: How Nature Can Improve Your Color Sense”

Thinking Like Nature

Straight lines– why do we do straight lines in gardens? Is it because it feels more organized? More proper? Easier to manage? I think there’s a time and place for straight lines in gardens. The long-rowed rectangular vegetable garden must be easier to harvest. A tidy formal garden feels right in a brick-walled city backyard.Continue reading “Thinking Like Nature”

Painting with Nature

I originally trained as a painter, so I often find analogs with painting whenever I learn a new discipline. Lighting Design, for instance- something I did for work at a concert hall during my twenties, was a lot like painting— layering colors to effect emotion— but painting fast, and from a distance. Satisfying, but ephemeral:Continue reading “Painting with Nature”