I paint because painting is the most effective form of communication I know. I paint landscapes because we exist in a landscape. We interact with the landscape every day whether it is in a loving, hostile or merely objective way. Through this interaction we inexorably alter the landscape and our environment. By existing in our environment from the first to the very last of our breaths, we change it and are changed by it. Yet our landscape and environment continues to exist after our passing.
I constantly engage in a sort of visual conversation when making my paintings. Questions I ask myself include: “How do I want to convey this particular moment?” “Why is it important?” Landscape painting is daunting. Even the most expressive and impressionist landscape painted remains at its un-interpreted core stubbornly mundane or maudlin. It is a landscape painters’ task to convey the uniqueness, not only of the environment but also a specific moment in time. It’s the painter’s task to convey the moment that hooked them and made them look a second time.
I use a reference photo or series of photographs to remind myself of the hook. The photograph itself is not exactly what I saw when I became intrigued with the moment, it is only a memory aid. The resulting painting is always close to but never exactly the moment of my excitement. The creation of the painting is a journey. It is a conversation with the medium and with my memories about that particular moment of inspiration. I work exclusively with oils on board. Board is necessary as canvas has too much give and bounces against my brush. My ground is typically modeling paste or wood putty applied with a palette knife. My underpainting is loose and washy, and I let much of the grain of the board or texture of the modeling paste peek through. It is with this layer that I establish horizon, ground, overall color and the intent of the painting.
As I continue to paint and interpret my intimate moment with a particular landscape, I become obsessed with atmosphere and less concerned with the literal translation of the subject. Light in my paintings bounces off of edges and finds a way into forms. Color and space flatten palimpsetically as underlying layers become revealed through repeated sanding and glazing.
The new collection of work, entitled “Provenance,” represents different aspects of the Black Rock Desert. It is the varied landscape and geological aspects that make the Black Rock so interesting. The mountain ranges, hidden springs and bleached players offer great fodder for the landscape painter. But it is the vastness, that singular way the sky touches, so uninterrupted, the curved horizon that makes Nevada so charming and bucolic.
