The Story Behind "Lanes, Lines & Lives"

Lanes, Lines & Lives

Florida Panther

40 x 40 in | Graphite on Yupo | 2025

The Florida Panther stands as one of the most endangered mammals in North America, with an estimated 120–230 individuals remaining in the wild. Habitat loss, road mortality, and inbreeding continue to threaten the species’ survival. Of these pressures, roads are the most lethal: collisions with vehicles are the leading cause of panther deaths, with dozens killed each year.

This drawing confronts the role of highways in shaping, and endangering, the Florida Panther’s existence. The road fractures the landscape in one direction and twists upward into the sky in another, reflecting how human infrastructure has disrupted and inverted the panther’s natural world.

A male panther typically requires 200 square miles of territory, while a female needs about 75 square miles. Roads that cut through these territories fragment vital habitat, forcing panthers into shrinking corridors and directly into conflict with vehicles. The road becomes both a literal and symbolic marker of vulnerability and oblivion—a reminder that the panthers survival is bound to the patterns of human development.

The Story Behind "Inheritance"

Inheritance

Northern Right Whale

18 x 18 in | Graphite on Yupo | 2025

This drawing of a whale and her calf—alongside a human and her daughter—positions motherhood as a cross-species experience, one that encompasses strength, vulnerability, responsibility, and protection. By presenting these parallel relationships, the work underscores both the resilience and the precarity of maternal bonds.

For the North Atlantic Right Whale, the challenges of motherhood are intensified by the realities of endangerment. The species is critically endangered, with fewer than 370 individuals remaining, and fewer than 70 reproductively active females. Threats include ship strikes, entanglement in fishing gear such as buoy ropes, and noise pollution that interferes with migration and communication.

Scientific studies show that entanglement disproportionately affects females. Even minor incidents can be fatal, and females are twice as likely as males to die as a result. This imbalance highlights the significant pressures placed on the very individuals most essential to the species’ survival.

By juxtaposing human and whale maternal pairs, the work reflects on the universality of caregiving while pointing to the urgent circumstances facing one of the ocean’s most imperiled species.

The Story Behind "Skyborne"

Skyborne

Black-Capped Petrel

 36 x 24 in | Graphite on Yupo | 2025

Endangered due to collisions with ships and offshore structures, as well as habitat destruction and light pollution that disorients the birds, leading  to collisions with wires and buildings during breeding season. The Black-capped Petrel comes to land only to breed—in the mountains of a Caribbean island, between November and May. Just one egg will be laid, and during this time the Petrel will feed chiefly at night, flying miles to forage at sea. After breeding, they return to the open ocean and fly as far as the coast of the Mid-Atlantic. An estimated 500-1000 breeding pairs remain. They are one of the rarest seabirds. 

In this piece, a woman carries light into the petrel’s mountainous breeding grounds. She reaches toward a patch of untouched sky, symbolizing our longing to protect what’s wild, even as we illuminate it into danger.