These paintings are landscapes.
They are derived from elements that I observe and then pull apart and selectively reconfigure. The viewer is gently led away from a directly observed image to one where a balance is struck between the known and the felt. The surface is organized into separate areas where one can experience the landscape as a vista across a body of water, as the transparency of light and objects seen beneath the water, and the combinations of light and color that play together among all of these views. The viewer can be drawn deep into the visual space or skate along the surface.
These shifting points of view allow me to selectively pull elements from the visual experience that most effectively express a heightened awareness of the felt experience of the place. These landscapes on tin are my newest work, reflecting the closest I have come to achieving my goal of capturing the sublime, remembered landscape. I do not try to capture a specific place but rather a mood. I try to transport the viewer to a place remembered by the use of subtle color combinations that are found in the landscape. The use of the acid washed tin allows me to create a surface that feels "of" water over which I describe a water place.
Place is not simply location. As poet John O'Donnohue writes: "With complete attention, landscape celebrates the liturgy of the seasons, giving itself unreservedly to the passion of the goddess. The shape of a landscape is an ancient and silent form of consciousness."
These serene landscapes allow a moment of beauty for the viewer - a communication with a landscape past seen or experienced. A connection to the watery earth that seems to be more and more elusive.