I am a landscape painter working in a variety of media: watercolor, oils, monoprints, woodcuts and linocuts. My works follows a long tradition of modern landscape painting that puts emphasis on expression. This requires interpretation rather than simply reproducing external reality.
Most of my work is done on-site, directly from nature. I prefer working this way because through the process of painting I make an intuitive connection with my surroundings and express an inner experience of reality. This means penetrating beneath external appearances to make a statement using the elements of painting—color, shape, line, etc.—representational of landscape, which, in turn, expresses my feelings and emotions about a specific time and place.
I have often used the diptych and triptych format to explore different aspects of a place and to suggest change and the passage of time, as opposed to a static, monolithic view. Nature is dynamic, and I want to express this as well as my relationship to it. In this, I have been influenced by Asian art, but also by photography.
Art, like dreams, has the capacity to bring unconscious content to consciousness. As this surfaces, art helps us find new physical images to collectively see, articulate, and integrate what has previously been denied or unimagined. In this way, we experience the world and ourselves more intimately.
My work is as much a statement about what we have not wanted to see as what we do want to see—the destruction of the environment or the beauty and splendor of nature. It is my intention to present a positive vision that requires seeing ourselves as part of a larger whole.