Tropical Dreams
An illustrated garden between memory and imagination.
Tropical Dreams is an illustrated garden between memory and imagination.
Two of the birds in the central scene—the pale blue and blue parrots with their eyes closed—are companions who have passed away. My dearest birds—Ruben and Lauren, are you doing well in a garden somewhere beyond this world?
I have lived closely with companion birds for years, observing their gestures, personalities and relationships. These observations do not become literal portraits. Instead, they gradually enter imagined scenes—mixed with plants, objects, seasons and memories.
THE FIRST LANDSCAPE
The series began with a horse and a seasonal landscape.
The series began with a horse and a seasonal landscape. Before Tropical Dreams became a larger world, it began with a quieter landscape: a horse surrounded by reddish leaves and botanical forms. This work established the visual language of the series—decorative borders, plants, animals and a slightly unreal sense of season and place.
THE GARDEN EXPANDS
From a landscape to a habitat.
The next work expanded the scene into a denser habitat. Parrots, mushrooms, snails, flowers and small decorative objects began to coexist within the same space. The garden became less like a single landscape and more like a place where memory, observation and imagination could overlap.
ANOTHER PLACE IN THE SAME WORLD
Same world, another quiet scene.
The horses by the water were created as a companion piece to the central garden. Rather than adding more narrative, I wanted this scene to slow the world down—a quieter place within the same imagined geography.
BETWEEN ROOM AND GARDEN
Experiments in space
Some works began to explore the boundary between interior space and the garden outside. Windows, doors and domestic structures allowed the birds and plants to move between observation and fiction more directly. These pieces function as visual studies rather than finished chapters of the series.
SEASONAL MEMORY
Is Autumn Coming?
The same visual language changes as the seasons change. Red leaves, berries, pinecones and winter flowers shift the garden toward another kind of memory. The birds remain familiar, but the world around them begins to age, cool and transform.
PARROT NOTES
Observation becomes an archive.
Parrot Notes is a parallel project built from everyday observation. It records small gestures, changing moods and the distinct personalities of birds living closely alongside human life.
If Tropical Dreams transforms memory into an imagined garden, Parrot Notes keeps those observations closer to their original form.
FROM ILLUSTRATION TO MOTION
The garden begins to move.
The project later expanded from still illustration into motion.
Plants shift, small creatures move, and scenes gradually transform within the same framed world.
Motion allows the garden to exist not only as an image, but as a place that seems to continue beyond a single moment.
Tropical Dreams is not a single finished story. It continues through illustration, motion, printed objects and the changing memories of the birds and plants that shaped it. Some remain beside me. Some remain only in memory. In the garden, they can still exist together.
saleign 2026
