Shells have been metaphors for me ever since I was a child and collected clam, slipper and snail shells on the Connecticut shore and dreamed of rarer species and more exotic locales. Shells represent shelter and movement, life and death, what (and who) flees and what (and who) stays behind, beauty and usefulness.

Whether common or rare, each shell is unique. And along with each leaf on a tree, each wave in the ocean, each snowflake in a blizzard and each person in humanity -- so too are the marks made by my hands. As a meditation on the gift of singularity, I like to paint an old, partly broken, favorite shell over and over.