The Downeast Maine coast, where I was born and now live, is a place of mysterious energies that express themselves in visually striking ways, making it impossible not to paint some of those expressions. Yet I have always also been aware of the existence of other realities that exist just beyond the veil that separates the physical from the mythic, an awareness that has recently been validated by contemporary physicists who are now theorizing that we live in a world made up of potentially countless parallel realities. My current work is a synthesis of the concrete and the mythic aspects of my observations and experiences.
My paintings are inspired by many things. I am often stunned by the complex beauty created by the play of light and weather on the surface of the sea. I dream of the seeds of life that exist beneath the sea, within the earth and in the atmosphere, all longing to be brought from Potential for Becoming into Being. I am undone by the sight of wildflowers growing with wanton exuberance in roadside ditches. I dream of mossy springs and the small streams they create gurgling beneath the exposed roots of the great cedars that shelter them. I see complex tapestries created by fields of autumn wildflowers or by layers of mosses, lichens and leaves carpeting the forest floor. Falling asleep at night, I see brush strokes, movements of light and dark, patterns of color and line, and they become part of my work. And always, whatever the content of any painting I make, I'm finding ways to include the mythic, archetypal energies hidden beneath the surface of visual perceptions of the world of matter.
Technically, my paintings are very much about painting itself; about pushing limits and relaxing preconceived ideas to imbue the work with certain energies or to create certain textures, interplays of color, light, shadow, or line on the canvas. For much of my early career, I dreamed of creating paintings of strange images that floated through my mind and through my dreams, but was not able to tease them from my mind onto canvas in ways that held and expressed their energies. Following a 1988 studio fire in which I was severely burned and all but a very few of my paintings were destroyed, I became able to paint those images. My work since has been about pushing limits and relaxing preconceived ideas to express the inscrutable and ineffable energies that speak to me through the mythic imagery that comes to me in dreams and visions. It is also very much about the process of painting itself; about creating textures; about color, light, shadow and line; about using the technical skills I've honed over the years to find my way towards expressing the mythic energies that inform my content choices. All of these influences are present in my current work, informing each decision I make from start to finish for each and every painting.
I studied art at the University of Maine, Orono, transferring to Goddard College, Plainfield, VT, where I earned a B.A. in Studio Art and Creative Writing, and while living for a time in New Mexico, did graduate level studio tutorials at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Later I earned an M.A. in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis on Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA. My work has been shown in Maine, New York, and Texas, and I sell directly from my studio/gallery on the Maine coast.