This new body of work explores color and form through images that reference the wetland ecologies of the northern Gulf Coast.  These are spaces where water meets land, places that thrive in tidal ambiguity and in the delicate balance of a breathing sea and constantly regenerating borderland.  They are also places endangered by human encroachment, industry, looming rising seas and anthropogenically altered patterns of nature.  The title of the exhibition comes from the idea of entering nature as a visitor: to most of us, it is a land apart. It is my hope that the paintings offer a way to enter these pictorial references to nature and find the world within. The work opens the door for the viewer to imagine themselves into an illuminated place, and to find in that kind of visual dream space their own internal awareness of landscape, place and nature. I paint the natural world, but it is densely meditated though my artistic practice. The landscapes are far removed from everyday life and painted at a distance (a land apart), but countless hours in the studio bring them to a world within. When I return to these places after having painted them, my sense and understanding of what I am seeing and experiencing is enriched by the work. The land apart becomes the world within.