Liminal Desert portrays colliding ecosystems. where desert succulents and cacti mingle with sponges and sea anemones and a toad and jellyfish interact. While desert and marine environments may appear completely disparate, this painting reveals how cacti and succulents can resemble coral life, and how the sand of the desert is sometimes the sand of the sea. Perhaps especially for an artist, awareness of apparent physical similarities among life forms from vastly different environments can foster greater understanding of and concern for the conservation of habitats, ecosystems, and ecosystem services.
A description by Stanford Professor (Medicine) Abraham Verghese, from his novel The Tennis Partner*, provides a very nicely articulated science lens for the "colliding ecosystems":
'I think they found it deliciously eerie to look around at a landscape that begged for water and picture how water had once been everywhere, that the buttes and arroyos had once been canyons and gorges, that the cacti and creosote bushes stood in for coral and sea urchins, and the rattlesnakes lurking in the dry sand stood in for sightless deep-sea creatures. "Oh," Jacob asked, tilting his head to me, "could it happen tomorrow?" "No, it'll never happen again," I said with the utter confidence and unshakable authority of a parent who wills nature to spare his children.'
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*1998 HarperCollins, p. 112.
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