PAINTINGS
Throughout my life and career I’ve always painted though I am not a pure painter. In my work painting has a broad definition. I integrate mixed-media, using painting as one modality among others, in the creation of environments and installations, sculpture and dimensional wallpieces. For my large scale work, often outdoors, I create illuminated painting, a form of simulated stained glass created with fluid paints and leading on lexan. Recently, I experimented with hand-dying natural fabrics to create strips for weaving, a kind of painting in space. Examples of these painting approaches can be seen in the public art gallery.
In my sculptures (view sculpture gallery) paint is often used to tone components that are integrated with natural elements. In wallpieces (view wallpiece gallery) paint may create landscape and other backdrops from which mixed-media elements come off surfaces. My wallpieces and installations also integrate color and depth with scrim fabrics, a kind of ephemeral, layered painting. A few examples included here feature seasonal wallpieces that incorporate painting.
This gallery primarily features plein air, seasonal landscape painting (two dimensional) which I’ve been creating throughout my life as a meditation practice. I am a swimmer who loves and am inspired by water. When I visit the ocean, lakes or other water bodies I study the movement of water during changing states and times. When the leaves change annually, I spend a month or two painting, as often as possible, outdoors. In the winter I sit in front of large windows trying to capture falling snow on trees or the dappled reflections of changing sun on snow.
The direct experience of trying to express nature through changing states, on paper, wood or canvass, is nearly impossible, but I try nevertheless. Over all the years I’ve been trying, this practice never gets easy. However, I can say emphatically that painting brings nature closer, making it immersive and transformative. Most broadly, working with color is deep and inspirational.