Suppose you grew up in square rooms, in square houses, in square towns of square states. In that case, you might find a square, or perhaps more appropriately a grid, becoming an unavoidable form in your landscape paintings and an inescapable conceptual component in your view of land, in your idea of home. The subject of my work today is place, the landscape of the Northern High Plains, and the Black Hills, which I call home. I love these places and their great space.
Memories of place, the feel as much as the look, haunt my existence. String memories of multiple visions together, dump them on a canvas, and stir them into visual equivalents of place and memory, and you’re close to my artistic process. Add an appreciation for the slant and refraction of light, colors reflected to the eye by land and sky, textures underfoot and at hand, and the space, that fraught emptiness of these lands as felt, seen, remembered, and conceptualized. In varying and unpredictable combinations, all of these interests provide the subject for my work.
It is also my hope that elements of form, individually and in concert, delight the eye, satisfy an innate sense for quality, sound rich chords recalling spaces and lands remembered and dreamt, real and archetypal, and that the works engage the intellect and imagination, and resonate in the heart of the viewer.