When I started this moth project, I made a list of all the peculiar moth names that intrigued me. The Blind-Eyed Sphinx was one of the first on the list, but I did not paint her first because―well, the Sphinx seemed like such an immense and mysterious mythological figure. I was not sure how to approach her. Who is the Sphinx? Where does she come from? I did a fair amount of research and came to the conclusion that nobody really knows.
Walking through the forest after a snow, the landscape is muted, a monotone scene of black, gray, and white. Yet it
I love Spring in the Southern Appalachians: the trilliums, the orchids, the mosses, the ferns. I love watching the early, many-hued palette of spring move up the mountainsides: brilliant chartreuse birches, delicate taupe-orange sarvisberry crowned with white flowers, golden sassafras, and of course the delicate magenta maple blossoms. Life awakens in a flourish of laughter.