Artist’s Statement

 

 

    

Growing up on a farm at the base of the Wasatch Mountains gave me a deep affinity for dramatic topography and the close-up marvels of rushing water, plants and animals.  My artwork speaks to the juxtaposition of these scales, to space and place and the allure of distance.  This connection to place and space lead me from my early art studies to a career as an architect, and has led me back to art as an essential expression of my experience of place.  Art has also been a recovery process from the compromises and complexities of architectural practice.

 

 

The majority of my subjects are landscapes.  Sometimes people will ask “Where is that place?”  Although my paintings and prints are often inspired by a particular place, I am always searching for the experience of a place filtered through memory and my experience.   I do sketch in the field, take notes and sometimes a photo record, but am a studio artist by preference and method.

 

 

I currently work primarily in oil painting and monotype.  Monotype provides a vehicle for spontaneous exploration and painting provides the opportunity for deeper development and evolution of a work.  I create my monotypes with black ink and their strong value structures are echoed in my paintings.  In my mixed-media monotypes, I add color directly to the printed monotype image, similar to hand tinting a black and white photograph, giving them a luminescent quality.        

 

 

The concepts of place and space are primary to my work and my experience of the world.  Through my work I ask the question, ‘What is it that draws us in?’  For me it is a sense of being here and longing for there – the meadow on the distant hill, or the farmstead illuminated by a stormy light. My expression of these concepts is informed and formed by the places I have lived – a farm at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, the arid West’s red rock, plateaus, canyons and lush mountains, the south of Spain, the maritime Northwest, and the richly agricultural Willamette Valley. I am fascinated by the dichotomy of the flat plane of the canvas or paper and the depth and layering of the landscape, giving both a presence in my work.