The paintings in the Family History series are based on personal family photos and 11th Century botanical drawings. Both of these sources represent mystery and the edge of changing perceptions; the botanical drawings are from a time when a nascent scientific understanding existed alongside a mystical awareness of the natural world, while the family photographs of people I never met represent a fact of the past onto which I project an emotional narrative to fill gaps in my personal history. When I compose the paintings, the overlap of sources creates a new story of its own.