Nancy Brookie-Connor grew up in the Bay Area and went to college in the Northwest where she studied literature and art, as well as earning her teaching credential. During her teaching career in elementary schools throughout California, one of her favorite subject areas was art. Having worked in watercolor for fifteen years, she enjoyed sharing her love of this medium with her students. Now recently retired, Nancy is very happy to be able to devote herself more fully to her art, and has recently begun to integrate monoprints and mixed media into her watercolors. She creates collages from monoprints, rice papers, maps, and grids and then uses these collages as grounds for painting and drawing. Through these many layers, some of which barely show underneath the top painted images, her vision is to convey the inspiration and mystery that she finds in nature and its many wild manifestations. She particularly hopes to create an awareness of the depth hidden in the interplay between the known and unknown, the seen and unseen.