My paintings are positioned in the range between description of the observed and invention of the impossible. My hope is that the works will be on the cusp of this range so they risk being too much of one of the above. It is this same questioning of what is seen in the landscape that motivates me to record these brief instances. Instances in which the light made the vast space in front of me appear to be at arms length, or when my point of view was so odd that the forms seemed ungrounded. It is this uneasiness with my perceptions that informs the work. The moment when in an awkward glance you see something that doesn't quite make sense, is the moment I attempt to convey in my paintings.
The source of the paintings are images I remember of moments that have stuck with me. They are not found by searching for the most breathtaking scene in my environment. Quite often the images originate from split second glances out of the corner of my eye when I did not fully comprehend what I saw. This might be the visual equivalent of eavesdropping on a conversation and only hearing a portion of it. The abbreviated misconstrued version of the story you overheard can be more interesting than the one with all the facts.
At the same time my abbreviated images start to come together, they begin to fall apart. The color, texture, perspective, and scale continue to problematically teeter between being convincing and just plain wrong. It is my intention to have the paintings exist between describing an image and revealing the painting process. I want you to see both what it is I am painting and how it is painted. I intend the paint to simultaneously look like a brushstroke and a tree branch.
The readability of the image and the paint are the two major variables that change from painting to painting. One painting may have a landscape that is easily recognized and understood, while in another, the space is more ambiguous. When the image is more recognizable I use the paint application, color to obscure it, while in a difficult to read composition, I stick more closely to natural colors and textures.