I've been thinking for many months now about how we have been working inside-out, bringing everything into our home from the outside, eventually with a sense of making our own Garden of Eden inside the house...so many people have become so much more aware of what they are bringing into their homes but also their minds, and then putting life so selectively back out into the world from that richer paradigm, expressing themselves in ways they may have not even known they had the strength to actualize until this time of forced self-reflection. I began to be aware and inspired by a new concept, "Build-Your-Own-Eden". Just bringing flowers into the dining room transforms the home and makes me think about the Earth outside and in, and my own part in the beauty and the challenges of our global community experience. Some of the paintings in this series include leaves from my own garden mixed with the cut flowers, just as I mix the outside Earth into my domestic space. Other elements are conversations on my perspective on other elements of life itself - self-expression, reflections on different types of autonomy, social activism, and making change inside and out. Amy Nelder 2022