Statement
Artist Statement
These landscapes are the lands I know and love. In northwest Washington I capture the crystal clear light, early dawn, cold northern lakes, fog and long shadows of winter. In eastern Washington I focus on the stark beauty of this exposed, eroded land using a saturated, luminous light so that I can chase and give form to my memories.
The rich light falling on the shrub-steppe, hills and coulees are among my earliest visual impressions. My great-grandparents were settlers – wheat farmers in the high desert and orchardists along the Columbia River – and my cousin still harvests wheat on that land.
I formally studied art – oil painting and cast metal sculpture – at Sonoma State University in northern California. My primary focus was bronze sculpture and in my paintings today you can see the slow, layered, multi-step technique and the graphic, abstracted shapes of those years of study.
Today I put long hours into my work and continue to study past and current art and techniques so that I can better convey the world that I see. My goal in painting landscapes is not to document a place but to convey atmosphere, memory and a sense of time and place.