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SENSORIUM
This alligator was one of the most challenging painting experiences. I began this commission during the first days of the current administration taking power in 2025. Things were getting scarier in the USA, and I was painting this “monster” with scales and teeth and projecting my apocalyptic dread onto my painting. And, at the same time, I was fascinated with this creature.
I stepped aside and let the paint itself feel and see this animal. The water found its way in… And it was happening… I loved the direction the painting was going in. The color and richness of the water and the reptile coming together, the scales beginning to form, the universe in its eye expanding out across the entire painting.
And then, a shift.
I found my way past my own scales of armor through science. I called on David Attenborough for help, looking at old documentary footage from the 1980’s in which David and his team followed the American alligators. The order Crocodylia have inhabited Earth for 250 million years. Imagine hatching from your egg with 250 million years of genetic wisdom in your body! These reptiles are the only ones to tend to their eggs. These incredible mothers will help those babies hatch (if they are struggling to get through the shell of their egg) by gently taking the egg in their giant jaws and cracking them. They then carry the babies in their mouths down to the nursery pool they have carved in the river bank for the early stages of their babies growth. And I was astounded by the stillness and sensitivity of these creatures. They look so fierce, and they absolutely can be fierce. But more often, they choose stillness as a way of being. Each scale has a tiny nub on it which is as sensitive as our fingertips. They can feel every disturbance in the still waters, every ripple alerts them to what is happening. They will communicate with each other with such subtleties of body language—like sinking their bodies ½” further into the water can speak volumes about territory. Even their mating is a gentle love scene!
I returned to my painting with a reverent bow. I felt Alligator and I pull the power back into her from all of the projections I had cast on her. I don’t have words for how profound an experience this was, to pull the power back into her body over the threshold of my own faulty, misguided assumptions.
To crown it all, I was listening to my painting playlist which is 12 hours long and I listen on shuffle. I had this sudden feeling of Sensorium being complete, that feeling of “I’m ready”. I stood back and held up the camera and I could swear the alligator winked at me. At the same time the musical part of whatever song I was listening to ended and then the musician in a spoken voice that said, “See you later Alligator”.
