Artist Statement

For nearly twenty years, I made non-objective grid structured paintings. I started to see references to landscape in these works. I have literalized those references by painting oil landscape vistas of horizons, clouds and bodies of water. I am currently painting luminescent oil paintings where I find the grey area between traditional landscape painting and its abstraction into color fields. I try to capture the mystical light found in natural atmospheric effects: the haze in the distance on humid summer days, the overcast gloom of winter skies, and the softness of landscape bathed in fog, and the quieting mood of approaching darkness. My intent is to create paintings imbued with a meditative, spiritual presence suggestive of time and ecology. I do this by softly modulating color, tone and value. The color varies from quiet, monochromatic works to fully orchestrated chromatic ones. By blending from one hue to another I create color which makes itself gradually felt, weeping forth. In this manner, I create illusions of mysterious emanations of light, places where one’s eyes and spirit are invited to linger.

I try to imbue my work with a monumental presence, epic in both size and scope. I do this by orchestrating the separate elements of color, texture and structure into a harmonious whole. I seek a somewhat reductive image rich in value and contrast. I do not want anything to distract from the illusion of depth. The compositions are about ambiguities of form and void, foreground and background, and surface and deep space.

My roots lie in tonalism, color field painting and minimalism. However, my work contains an ever-present awareness of the dramatic use of light of the post-renaissance chiaroscurists. It combines a classical awareness of structure with a romantic use of color always in combination with a unique sense of ambiguity.

My work continues in its evolution of style the search for an abstract means of probing the ambiguities of physical and spiritual experiences of light, and its power to foster a more intense life of the spirit through profound emotional experiences of form, color and composition.