Shortly after my mom moved away from the hectic urban madness of Los Angeles and up to a quiet, pristine wilderness area nestled in the middle of Northern California’s Plumas County, I started receiving hand drawn and painted postcards and greeting cards from her. As it turned out, so were a lot other family members, as well as her friends, so I have no idea how many of these little pieces of original art have been created to date. But it was clear that the high country environment had a profound impact on her artistic inspiration. Otherwise, who would have time to make so many hand painted postcards?

Usually torn and tattered from the postal system journey, colors hopelessly smudged or imprinted with the scars of automated sorting machines, no matter how many of these cards I received over the years, I was always amazed that anyone would go to so much trouble when, surely, the rigors of the postal system would virtually destroy the effort set forth.

Recent advances in digital cameras, scanners and photo manipulation software had rekindled my interest in photography and at some point my arsenal of digital tools became pretty substantial. The collision between my gear, my skills, and the advent of high quality digitally produced books provoked me to dig out the box of hand painted cards to see if I could restore a few of the images on them and produce a suitable memoir of these diminutive but interesting works of art originally created by my mother.

Postcards from Plumas is the result of that collision of technology and art and I hope you enjoy viewing it as much as we enjoyed creating it.

If you enjoy artistic representations of nature and especially, western wildflowers, you will thoroughly enjoy this book.