Natural Talent

A couple days ago, I ran across the website for Project FLOW, a grade-school science curriculum developed by Michigan Sea Grant with lessons built around the ecology of the Great Lakes. Sounds like a neat course, but what stood out to me was one of the graphics at the site:

I liked it, and something about it looked very familiar. Then I remembered that an artist friend of mine works at Sea Grant as a graphic designer. I checked the credits, and there he was: Todd Marsee.

Todd is a former colleague of my wife's, and has been creating and selling though-provoking nature-inspired paintings for a number of years. I like his work because it steps outside the strict realism of most of the nature art that I see. It shows some serious thinking about how people relate to their environments, yet is representational enough for people with limited exposure to the visual arts (like me) to understand and appreciate. Todd has an online gallery; give it a visit.