My work combines illusionistic space with the interpretive mark-making inherent in the abstract ordering of the chaos of nature. While my imagery is influenced in varying degrees by views of particular places, and influenced by over thirty years of plein air drawing and painting, observation and invention combine equally. I create places that are both appealing and turbulent, observational, imagined, and surreal. I consider myself an explorer, studying the atmosphere of diverse spaces. My acrylic paintings, on either canvas or 300 lb. paper, portray the pulsating rhythms found in undulating hills, rippling fertile fields, echoing distant mountains and shifting skies. Patterns used throughout are for me equivalent to sound--I see patterns in nature as musical: symphonic, chaotic, expressive of a lonely sense of beauty. There is a sense of isolation and perhaps even lurking dread, evocative of our current world atmosphere, which reflects how I experience my place in it. Concurrently, is my constant longing to return anew to a more hopeful place and time like, to quote poet John Ashbery, recurring waves of arrival. 

My paintings depict various times of day and night, with shadows intentionally contradictive to nod to the simultaneity of and passage of time. In these times of environmental and societal devastation, I consider it a political act to immerse myself in the landscape-- to record the natural beauty that still exists, to incite the arousal of sentiment, a stirring of connectedness-- and to comment on the uncertainty within an unsettling world out of control. But I hope my work reminds us all how much beauty still abounds in nature and inspires a connection with our higher selves—in order to carry on and still dream.

Recent Night Paintings:

Beneath the Moon, Under the Sun
     Throughout history dark times have often prevailed, part of the ebb and flow of civilization, humanity, nature, pop culture. Hope is always linked, however lagging and reluctant-- waiting for its turn to re-emerge. Day and night, sun and moon, good and evil: two sides of the coin of existence.

     So many epithets regarding light and dark, day and night —reflecting hope in difficult times—come to mind. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. There’s a new Dawn. It’s darkest before the Dawn. Day is considered positive, night turning to day signifies hope and rebirth, while day into night implies a time of less clarity, confusion, anxiety. I have often dreaded night, a time when details and boundaries are blurred, a literal and symbolic loss of vision, the possibility of uncontrollable, mysterious energy emerging.

     So many great song and film titles come to mind that reflect a collective unease of the dark, a passage into unknown territory, unleashed passions where all bets are off. Long Day’s Journey Into Night. In the Heat of the Night. A Hard Day’s Night. Night Fever. Night Move. On the Dark Side of the Moon. Because the Night. All imply an unknown, unchecked passion, structureless abandon. Horror films typically take place at night, vampires awake. There are Noir films, graveyard shifts, night sweats. Energies are peaked, rules are broken, boundaries erased.

     Although by circadian circumstance I have tended towards the nocturnal I have at the same time always been afraid of the dark and dread the daily relinquishing of daylight. While mostly a daylight landscape painter for many years, quite a while ago I painted a series of plein air paintings at night. While unable to see my colors on my palette was liberating and waiting for color to emerge out of the darkened landscape was mysterious and mesmerizing, it made me nervous as hell. There is a palpable energy at night when nature’s seemingly arrested rhythms are actually teeming with an unseen life force. Quietly pulsating to a more primordial beat. Real or imagined unwanted creatures, or just doubts and fears avoided in daylight, emerge from out of boundless depths and threatening crevices. Our anxieties propagate, loneliness is intensified, dread is unleashed. A time to hide under the covers.

     From where we stand now, societally, night is the new day. The basest primeval behavioral instincts seem to have taken over. It is hard to hold on to the light. But so far, every day, the sun also rises and for that we are grateful.