About the Artist

I am a studio painter who likes to wander the natural landscape to seek out the unusual that will be a catalyst for a painting idea. I look for a quality of light that suggests a mood, or a dramatic land or water formation that sets up an unusual relationship between these elements. I take photos to record that moment, and use that information in building a painting back in the studio. I want my paintings to express a moment in the landscape--one that moves the viewer and one that leaves the viewer alone with that place. Equal to the experience of that place is the importance of the painting itself as an object created by my hand.

For many years while working on my realist landscape paintings I have been working on a parallel series of surrealist paintings. These paintings are most aligned to the images of surrealist painter Rene Magritte. They represent a fantasy world of imagined and real things and are often playful and sometimes serious. For me they are an added creative outlet. I have always sought the unusual scene in my landscapes; one that gives an edge to the work. It seems natural to step away, from time to time,from the disciplined focus of the landscape and turn to unbounded fantasy of surrealism.