This painting explores a symbiotic metaphor that hints at the threads that connect all life on earth. It implies a generally irreversible evolutionary journey into a very strange world where the usual rules don’t apply. Once individuals fall down the rabbit hole, it can be hard to escape. And at the bottom there is no magical wonderland, only extinction.

Inspired by my travels this summer to the National Forests in CA, where the red snow plant is found. The scientific name Sarcodes translates roughly to "the bloody flesh-like thing," an allusion to the bright red color of the plant (the entire plant, not just the flowers). Snow plant has no chlorophyll, therefore does not need the sun to survive. The snow plant derives nutrition from fungi underneath the soil, and for this reason the plant is called "mycotrophic". Out of the dead carcass of a mother cottontail rabbit, grows an unlikely floral arrangement of native Spotted Coral Root Orchid, and Woodland Pinedrops. Parasitic Dodder plants curl their yellow tendrils around, vibrant purple Bridges Pincusion plants, choking them to death. Meanwhile California Tortoiseshell Butterflies pollinate the flowers and drink salt from the tears of the deceased mother rabbit, harnessing the fuel created through the process of decomposing. Her two offspring, cuddled close, inadvertently rely on this transferred fuel to transform their biochemistry, harmonizing their metabolisms throughout their bodies.