I grew up in a household that paid a lot of attention to plants and flowers, largely because they were my mother's primary interest. After her death, I found a sheaf of botanical prints, which I treasured because of their connection with her, and because I enjoyed their scientific detail and Latin names. I wanted to engage with them even though that risked destroying them. Yes, I came to them with an agenda — the marks I was doing then — but how they came out was very much under the influence of the print. 

It’s an example of treating a background surface — like the stationery in History Watercolors — as an arena to operate in. What will I do? The stakes are high because I care about it.