Thoughts on Paintings and New Projects
It’s been 6 years since I’ve started my intense study and pursuit of painting but my journey really began 10 years ago with health issues and a reexamination of what I wanted out of life. My Memento Mori series focuses on this and the idea of facing one's mortality but I have been thinking about why I have become so drawn in by landscape painting and what the connection is there. Life and death is constantly surrounding us, death seems to come slowly from the human viewpoint until it is standing right in front of us. Being immersed in a landscape and the changing seasons allows us to see the coming and going of life and death at different rates. I can paint in one spot all year and see life, death, and rebirth. Spring brings fresh buds and new life while winter sees the last leaves fall and the color drain from the plant life. Both are uniquely beautiful but there is something special in the darkness of winter to me. There is hope in knowing that new life is to come and the lack of color in the landscape brings the focus to the beautifully cool light of the winter sun. Landscape painting for me isn’t as simple as capturing nature’s beauty, it’s a meditation on life and death and seeing the beauty in both.
Galisteo Basin Project/ Valles Caldera Project
It all begins with an idea.
As I reach the end of this first Galisteo Basin Project I am transitioning to a project focusing on my favorite place in New Mexico, The Valles Caldera. This is a volcanic caldera at the top of the Jemez Mountains. Driving up the mountain from Los Alamos and reaching an elevation of 11,253 feet you leave the forest and are greeted by the vast openness of the caldera. Depending on the time of year the caldera shifts in color and intensity of light, the cloud coverage varies drastically and changes quickly behind the mountain peaks surrounding the caldera. There is an ancient feel to a place like this that has drawn me in from the first time I saw it. Like my Galisteo Basin project I hope to capture the different seasons and ebs and flows of life and death in Valles Caldera. As always I hope to evoke the feeling of the place rather than a reproduction of it.
100 New Mexico Skies
It all begins with an idea.
These are smaller quicker paintings focusing on the vast, diverse skies here in New Mexico. I was inspired to do this project by my teacher and friend Toby Hall who recently did a 100 landscape project. 100 seems like a daunting number of paintings but by keeping them smaller and quicker I hope to open up my painting process and experiment and evolve my application and vision. This also allows me to offer works for a lower price to collectors.