Quiet glimpses of polypores, or shelf fungi, connect me to a bigger world in this mixed media painting (acrylics, graphite stick, crushed rock, posca, photo ink transfer collage) on canvas. My artistic process begins with looking for interesting textures, colors and patterns in nature. With the richness of paint, fungi come alive with tactile layers and amplified colors. I enjoy the intrigue that is created when pieces of a transferred photograph are sometimes recognizable and sometimes abstractly woven into the background, moments when the eye must consider what is real and what is not real.