My art explores a human connection to nature. I am fascinated by our obvious reliance on the natural world juxtaposed with our desire to control, eliminate, and even avoid it. I feel there is a great need to reinvent a way to coexist with nature in our modern world and mend society’s alienation from it. Art can translate what has been lost from the modern zeitgeist: an understanding of the complexity, our integration with, and the awe of nature.
I have a formalist interest in the surface design of the painting. Enthralled with the color, fluidity, and texture of the paint itself, I strive to evoke an aesthetic response to the sensuous marks of the medium. I also want to record a sense of the light, forms and mood of a particular place. Striving to find a balance between depicting the space in a landscape with creating beautiful gestures in paint, my work is a blend of representation and expressionism. I find there is a joy in discovering observed truth in expressive marks.
Spending time immersed in nature informs my art. I have traveled to many national parks as well as the countrysides of England, France, Ireland, and Switzerland to hike, sketch, and photograph the land. These experiences as well as painting in the landscapes around my rural Indiana home connect me to those places. The paintings are a record of my interactions and responses to these environments. Paul Klee said, “Art does not reproduce the visible, it makes visible.” I want my landscapes to make visible my translations of nature and have that resonate with the viewer.