My paintings are semi-abstracted landscapes inspired in large part by places in the Pacific Northwest. The ocean, fields, mountains and grasslands, these images serve as a bridge between us and the natural world. Within each painting, I create multiple views of the land depicted, in order to keep the eye constantly moving over the space.
We are all a product of landscape. In a time when our lands are threatened there is a pressing imperative to find a common vocabulary, to create a reminder of the solace often found in nature Edmund Burke spoke about the sublime experience and its power to transform the self. I seek a contemporary version of the sublime through the creation of a fluid visual experience; one which mirrors our interactions with time and place. The paintings’ illusion of depth preserves the integrity of the picture plane while the layered rectilinear forms both maintain the illusion and, by their nature, break that very plane.
My art is not a simple depiction of a place but a reminder of our longing for nature and the concomitant complexities of our relationship with the natural world. Each one of us brings our own memories and desires to all we see. They overlap and intersect in a constantly changing dialogue.
Painted in acrylic on canvas, the work is heavily textured in places: fabric, natural materials and paper that represent the human need to touch evinced first by the physical traces of what I have created and then by a kind of haptic call to the viewer; they are a call to be touched and a reminder of how we touch nature can affect us all.