June 2008 Residency:
Abstraction emerges as visual recognition, subsides. In painting the landscape I walk the line between representation and abstraction within the same frame. Abstract images encourage direct experience and invite emotional identification with the suggestion of imagined terrain.
My landscape painting is at once abstract and figurative and reference human forms. Land is a metaphor for our macro body, it is part of us and we are part of it. The earth is our physical, emotional and spiritual selves and I paint landscapes to elicit emotion and communicate feeling.
Non-representational landscape painting can be thought of as contemplative environmentalism. I paint new ground desiring to awaken feelings of reverence and awe; to bring attention to that which we are in danger of losing.
Below are samples from three collections:
Rice paper, ink, gouache. Title: 5. 25. 08 3"x 3"
Ink and oil on yupo. Title: Old City of Bam, Iran 18"x 24"
Oil on copper flashing. Title: Ridge 9"x 12"*note: samples are found in the Semester Summary.
