About the Landscapes
Expressing
the landscape in rich color and strong emotion is my goal.
Huddled in my car in dead of winter, or painting “en
plein air” during warmer seasons, I’m inspired, emboldened,
and challenged by Nature in all her glory and profusion of
color.
This work you see is a celebration of the beauty of the
Midwestern landscape -- both real and imagined.
It reflects places I’ve been or places I want to be. If it
touches you in some emotional or familiar way then I’ve
succeeded.
About My Approach to Watercolor
I’m
mostly an intuitive painter, but I do plan. Some landscapes
are imaginary based on lots of looking and feeling,
especially in the woods. Or sometimes I’ll do several
sketches to work out composition and values, and often
paint many variations of the same subject.
Influenced by Turner, Sargent, Cezanne, Andrew Wyeth, and
Expressionists like Emil Nolde, I try to express the
landscape boldly and with fewer strokes to tell the story.
Watercolor painting for me is like “performance art” – do
it fast and keep it fresh – but I’ve also put in the hours
trying to get it right.
Working initially “wet in wet” on paper, I often let the
painting take on a life of its own -- regardless of my
starting sketch or idea. I’m open to the accidental
and the mysterious.
When I move the paint around on the wet paper I’m in
another world and often lose track of time (and
restraint!). I scrape with my fingernails … I throw
and drip and mix the pigment on the paper … I lift up
pigment with brush, towel, or fingers … I put
too-dark paintings in the bathtub and start again on the
“old ghost” images left behind.
And true to the transparent watercolor tradition, I don’t
use any white paint so I have to plan it backwards. The
light you see is the white of the paper.
To me, art-making is truly a gift and an expressive
journey, where my spirit comes through in some magical way,
if I’m lucky that day.