About the Artist

Having farmed for the better part of my adult life, it comes as no surprise that my painted imagery would involve the forms, energy forces and processes of the natural world, often unseen, though at work on all living things around us.

Early on, I loved the signs themselves, artifacts of these processes: the crystalline patterns that Jack Frost left on our winter windows, skeletonized dried leaves, an uptick in wind that often preceded a storm that darkened nearby hills, the color change of light through atmosphere and distance, the morphing of a compost pile from things dead and deteriorating into friable and life-giving.

If I could see the forces that created these artifacts, what would they look like?

In my later years, painting proved to be a second voice for exploring the unseen - that heat or energy behind the physical world. It has worked well to watch the marks that my hands make, with mark followed by mark, until they accumulate into something interesting - a pulse. The pulse gets explored, simplified, and intensified until, if I’m lucky, I gain a glimpse of some hidden layer, exposed and shining.

This is process-oriented work. It’s imprecise, messy and with uncertain outcomes. By not having intentions about the outcome of my work, there is less chance that I will limit out surprises so that anything can happen.

To this end, my work is inevitably abstracted. I use oil and cold wax medium, graphite, inks and charcoal on wooden cradled panels or on paper. My effort will continue to be making art that is as authentic as possible to the exploration of these forces behind all that we see as our lives.