La Jolla artist, Kathryn Stephens is mindful of how climate change and habitat loss are reshaping the wild places she loves. Kathryn paints the untouched, complex tangle of shapes and colors found in overgrown and wild spaces. These are not manicured gardens or postcard views, but the dense, unruly beauty of growth left to its own logic — vines overtaking fences, roots breaking through stone, color pressing up through shadow.

These paintings function as a kind of sanctuary — a place to slow down inside an increasingly fast, fragmented world. But they are also a form of advocacy. By asking viewers to really look at the intricate detail of a single tangled corner of the earth, she hopes to renew a sense of connection to the natural world, and a shared urgency around protecting it amid climate change and diminishing biodiversity.