I am honored to be a member of the Huntington Library Garden Arts Guild. At present I am working on a series of paintings in the Huntington Desert Garden. The Garden is like the surface of another planet with an endless variety of exotic forms and intense colors. In the paintings, Fire and Ice, and Under the Volcano, I contrast the emerald greens, blue-violets, and turquoises of the plant life with the fiery volcanic stones that line the flower beds. Because I typically begin my paintings in the early morning before the public arrives, my paintings often feature a landscape back-lit by the low angle of the morning sun in winter, as in my two paintings, Golden Barrels at the Huntington Library and The Great Kapok. Spending so many hours rendering this magical Desert Garden in jewel-like color makes me think of Aldous Huxley, who in Doors of Perception, kept telling himself: "This is how one ought to see, how things really are."