paintings in the landscape

2003 - 2009

oil on paper and canvas

 

Painting in the Southwest shaped my art and even my method of painting. The names of the places that I’ve camped and painted invoke images of warm light, sand, the blue of my tent, pine, paint: La Cienega, El Mal Pais, Jemez, Wild Rivers, Bland Canyon, Bosque del Apache, Chaco Canyon, Valle Vidal, Mexican Hat, Horseshoe Canyon, Mulley Point, Cedar Mesa…

 

Some paintings are more representational depictions of the existing landscape; reactions to temperature, light and limited time frame. Others were created as a result of  Andy Goldsworthy-esque arrangements  that I constructed. They began as small still lives and evolved to take on more animal-like forms.

 

Painting in the landscape requires an immediacy that is not found by hours of painstaking blending in the studio. Outdoors, the correct color must be mixed and laid in and large shapes blocked in before light and weather changes.

 

Even when painting indoors in the studio, I began to prefer a method of painting that embraced the immediacy of reacting to and then recording, rather than planning and analyzing. I try to capture each image with the least amount of strokes possible, favoring gesture over blending, aiming to render an image that can be striking across the room and breaks into brushstrokes upon closer examination.