"I paint usually two or three hours at a time and like using oils, but lately I've also been working with nontoxic acrylics. I mix my paints with a medium that makes the colors translucent, and build up the painting in layers. I don't work from photographs. These paintings are made intuitively, from observing the woods around me -- like floorboards and fences -- and the rest I make up. They take up to 100 hours apiece to paint and I've completed eight or nine so far. The first few were on canvas, and the last several are on plywood, which is harder but lets me play with the relationship between real and faux. When I started this project, I worried I'd get sick of it, since I used to make abstract expressionist paintings and impressionistic portraits, full of color. Then I realized how complex the color was in walnut or mahogany. I see these paintings as portraits of the woods, yet also as abstract as anything I've ever made."

— Sarah Coleman, as told to Jonathon Keats