My Grandmother Dequisne placed a stick of pastel in my four-year-old hands so that I could paint alongside her, and unknowingly started me on the path toward a career in art.

Today, my most persistent inspiration comes from the rock writing I have seen during my travels in the Southwestern United States, Hawaii, and Central to South America, Australia, Africa and China. Mysterious petroglyphs and pictographs are universal and meaningful symbols written on the rocks by people who have long since disappeared.

Art is my vehicle for preserving the last remaining traces of this ancient visual language that is, literally, an endangered species. When I replicate the authentic pictographs and petroglyphs I have seen in my watercolors, oils, pastels and prints, I feel a relationship with the archaic artists who originally pecked them on stone or painted them on cave walls.

Prior to becoming an artist, I taught school for fifteen years. Four years in Argentina plus one year each in Costa Rica and the jungles of Guatemala left me with a residue of beautiful imagery and a deep fondness for the native people of those countries. After teaching nine more years in Elgin, Illinois schools, I enrolled in the American Academy of Art in Chicago where I graduated with a fine arts degree in 1988. Since then I have developed a contemporary, expressive style.

Ingrid photographing ancient rock art in Arnhem Land, Australia.

I create my work on various surfaces: some seem stone like, others are on handmade paper. Their irregular edges and textural qualities suggest the cave walls and rocks on which aboriginal artists left their designs. With special attention to light and dark patterns, I express my passion for subject matter that I have directly experienced. My work is meant to have heart. If the viewer enjoys my paintings as much as I enjoy creating them, I have accomplished my goal of evoking connections. To evoke connections is also to teach. In my art, I have synthesized my deepest commitments.

My hope is to encourage respect and appreciation for the fragile treasure of rock writing that links us to a shared, distant past. Although some of these images are easily interpreted, others remain unknown, waiting for the insight of someone who can bring us to their full meaning. Perhaps one of my paintings will provide the key, a Rosetta stone for the future.