I started drawing late in life. At 36, after I lost my right eardrum in a bombing, I decided to learn to draw with my left hand. For the first time, I took a class. I am left-handed, but I learned to write with my right hand, as it was still semi-customary in France in the 1980’s. At a time when the right side of my body was still healing from the bomb, reclaiming my left hand became more of a priority. I was surprised to discover that my left hand had a personality closer to the six-year-old I used to be: feral, messy, with residues of a pre-verbal wisdom.

Watercolor came into my life even later: in July 2021, I took a watercolor and pigment making workshop in the desert in Central Oregon. Wildfires encircled the artist residency that weekend, and each morning we studied smoke in the sky and prepared to evacuate. Eventually we were able to stay for the duration of the workshop and one of the exercises our teacher Daniela Molnar gave us was to interview a body of water. I interviewed the pond near my cabin.

Here is a short extract from our conversation that I kept in my notebook:

• How does the smoke of wildfires feel?

• The smoke cannot touch me.

• What do you think about humans?

• They act as if they don’t know they are made of water.

• What do you think about artmaking?

• A strategy to remind humans they are water.

Photography, in my practice for the past decade, is mostly a tool to dialogue with trees. In Portland, Oregon, I live in a neighborhood with several heritage trees, and during the pandemic, I visited some of them daily, with my iPod in my pocket. Taking their picture was one way to learn to listen to them. Slow down. Study their syntax.