Artist’s Statement: This work is loosely based on the landscape of Alameda County. To prepare for the paintings, I drove into the hills, around the lake, and down along the bay, to get the feel of local trees and plants into my mind’s eye. Then I went back to my studio to paint.

My landscapes are all done from imagination. This approach helps give them an atmospheric feel that wouldn’t be possible if I were painting outdoors from life, or from photos.

Early on in my career, I found that I had a deep interest in “beauty”. I wondered what beauty was, how it is experienced, and began to explore it as a subject. That meant trying to figure out what was beautiful to me, and how to express that visually. I also had an urge to do work that was useful in some way, work that gave the viewer something, that had some generosity. I have tried a variety of approaches to accomplish this, but all of my work, both the abstraction and the realism, share a sense of simplicity and quiet. This has been my answer to the question of how to make the work a gift: to offer visual sanctuary, to give the eye and the mind a place to rest.