I AM URSULA.

Born and raised in the wild Coastal woodlands of West Florida, I now make my home in the lush deserts of Southern Arizona. While the transition from a flat, tropical environment to the arid mountains of the Sonoran Desert felt anything but natural to me, I ultimately surrendered to the magic of seemingly unending transitions that can be found between the lower elevations and lofty sky island ranges.

I never imagined myself as an artist growing up, but was always a naturalist compelled by curiosity at the site of speckled eggs in a Blue Jay’s nest and the flashing neon of a summer sunset. It was a natural progression taking up various mediums to express the joy and wonder I sense directly onto a surface, or through my lens. All that passion has led me to explore numerous art mediums, including pen and ink, watercolor, acrylic and my current love, soft pastel. An easy end was to shift to mixed media, combining all of my favorites when the subject merits it. A creative life developed for me forth from years of looking deeply at the world around me and realizing that I had no choice but to find a way to capture what had enraptured my very soul.

I have been fortunate to earn a Nature Art Certificate at the Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum Art Institute. My habit is to take any class that grabs my attention and incorporate what I learn into my work as well as my teaching. I’ve exhibited at Raices Taller 222 Art Gallery, at the ASDM Baldwin Gallery, at Murphy Gallery as well as having the honor of my work being part of private collections across the country.

I see art as an illustration of a life well lived. The artist life I aspire to is the life of one who lives fully present and able to engage a place, a plant, a creature, a habitat, in a tangible manner. My goal is to invite others into my own fascination with the world around me, to create a desire to be intimate with the living world of plants, animals and ecology and from that space of wonder, to find ways to care for and conserve the natural world.

Every piece of art begins with time spent in the natural world observing and loving what I’ve found. Each time I walk out the door, I am doing so in an attitude of curiosity, discovery and adventure. I see myself as a perpetual student of the Earth and, necessarily, of the creative possibilities with which I hope to illuminate it. I work, through graphite, ink, watercolor, acrylic and soft pastel coupled with photography and written words to create a cohesive body of work that calls to the soul of anyone willing to consider the mysteries of the universe.