For many years I’ve worked almost entirely in landscape, seduced by the interaction of land, water, and light. My work is specific to place: I hike and climb there, in locations as disparate as the Red River Gorge in my native Kentucky, the dramatic coasts of Cape Breton-Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, the majestic intimacy of Quebec’s Gaspesie, the endlessly beautiful Everglades, Vancouver Island, and many years exploring coastal Maine. More recently I discovered the sublime Oregon coast.
I explore space in my drawings – negative space, how it pushes up against, and how it reaches deep. Surface is important to me, and the calm shapes, land, and water make: the dark swell and curve of a mountain, the hard pull of shadow and stone, the distant undulation of a watery horizon, a river’s meandering sway. These images invade and inhabit me, as the work hovers and dips between realism and abstraction.
I love oil paint for its sensuality, and its dichotomy of muscularity and delicacy. I love charcoal for its immediacy, its responsiveness, and its surprises. I find the thick and thin-able texture of oil stick & oil pastel supremely addictive. My practice now includes working from photographs I take when looking. The drawings evolve. They become their own place.