The Lupine Seal was inspired by the wild lupine of the Sierra and the Bluebonnets of Texas, after a fellow Quaintrelle, Val, requested the flower as an emblem of her beloved home state. Though I had long known the Bluebonnet by name, I had not realized until then that it is itself a variety of lupine.

I have always loved the way lupine seems to belong completely wherever it grows. In my native Tahoe, pale periwinkle lupine rise beside granite and lingering snow. In Texas, Bluebonnets spread across entire fields each spring in vivid rivers of blue. In Finland and across the Nordic countries, lupines bloom beneath the endless light of Midsummer.

The flower changes subtly with each landscape while remaining unmistakably itself.

To me, the Lupine Seal became a meditation on belonging. It doesn't belong through sameness or difference. It simply grows from the environment.

This seal is about belonging not through becoming anything but to realize that those of the universe belong in the universe. Ecologically. Cosmically. Completely.