Artist Statement
My paintings explore specific qualities of light as both an observed experience, and as a phenomenon of memory and place. Sometimes I recall the expectant light of a moisture-infused morning. Other times I think about the retreating warmth inherent in the fleeting light of early evening.
I grew up enjoying the bountiful lakes, streams, and wilderness areas of northeastern Minnesota. I have also have the good fortune to spend a number of years in the Desert Southwest. It was the lasting impressions of these environments that were to later be infused with my understanding of contemporary abstract painting in order to lay the foundations for the abstract impressions of light and form.
Along with, and perhaps in contrast to, the specificity of light... each painting also has a sense of the universal in that they do not depict any particular view of scenery. Rather they serve as an archetype to the process of painting itself...the insistence of gestural brush strokes...a confirmation of the idea of painting as abstraction first and foremost.
These are abstract paintings rooted in the here and now by making use of both observed light and a remembered/imagined sense of space. A space that is both deliciously close, yet deliriously distant...like a mirage...approaching the edge of recognition, yet careful to remain untouchable.
Forms may reveal themselves as shimmering entities… are they solid mass, or, like a mirage- merely the movements of vapor? This I leave for the viewer to decide.
My artistic influences include Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Susan Rothenberg.
I grew up enjoying the bountiful lakes, streams, and wilderness areas of northeastern Minnesota. I have also have the good fortune to spend a number of years in the Desert Southwest. It was the lasting impressions of these environments that were to later be infused with my understanding of contemporary abstract painting in order to lay the foundations for the abstract impressions of light and form.
Along with, and perhaps in contrast to, the specificity of light... each painting also has a sense of the universal in that they do not depict any particular view of scenery. Rather they serve as an archetype to the process of painting itself...the insistence of gestural brush strokes...a confirmation of the idea of painting as abstraction first and foremost.
These are abstract paintings rooted in the here and now by making use of both observed light and a remembered/imagined sense of space. A space that is both deliciously close, yet deliriously distant...like a mirage...approaching the edge of recognition, yet careful to remain untouchable.
Forms may reveal themselves as shimmering entities… are they solid mass, or, like a mirage- merely the movements of vapor? This I leave for the viewer to decide.
My artistic influences include Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Susan Rothenberg.
