Description

When my daughters were three and four, they would bathe together. After drying off, they would run into our bedroom and jump up and down with pure delight on the “Mommy and Daddy bed”. Watching them was one of the gifts of parenthood, taking me back to the days when I too was a bed jumper. I immediately knew this event would become another painting in my Turtle Series.

The Turtle Series is my suite of surreal autobiographical paintings that allegorically use turtles as stand ins for myself and others, with the intention to show our connection to other species, i.e. the image on the reverse side of this card.

Originally the center of the spiral was eggless and empty. On one fated afternoon, I was listening to a radio interview. A gentleman named Dr. Carl Safina was talking about his newest book “Voyage of the Turtle”. Dr. Safina was a compelling storyteller.  In the first chapter of his book he described his visit to Trinidad to witness gigantic Leatherback Turtles coming to shore to lay their eggs, where whole families of Trinidadian villagers come out to celebrate, observe and protect the turtles from poachers. It was a nocturnal fertility festival for the mythic Leather backs, creatures with a recorded history of about 220,000,000 years. After reading the story, it was obvious that the empty space in the center of the spiral in my painting was waiting for a turtle’s egg.

The painting’s working title was the “Happy Baby Painting”. While reading “The Voyage of the Turtle”, I started communicating with Dr. Safina via Facebook. When I finished the painting, I asked him to contribute the title.  “Hatchlings.”  I thought I was painting “Mommy and Daddy Turtle Protectively Orbit the Babies as they Celebrate the Zygote Creation in the Circular Spiral of Life”. Numerous parents have told me that’s what their babies did after bathing, it is apparent that this painting has been created through the lens of the happy baby zeitgeist.
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• Each print is a signed and numbered Limited Edition of 300.
• Printed with highest quality archival paper and ink with a minimum 1″ border.
• 10% of each turtle series print is donated to help species preservation efforts around the globe.