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.