Statement

My paintings record my physical understanding of a scene: the sensations of land, water, plants, and air. I hope a viewer will look intuitively, with an open mind, in the way one does when painting. My landscapes celebrate real places as we experience and feel them.

Pictures for me are a way to affirm and understand things. A map scratched in the dust, a circle divided, a face. Pictures show the process of looking, finding structure, and telling a story. 

Abstract expressionism dominated when I was learning to paint. My heroes were David Park, Joan Brown, Joan Mitchell. I cherish the expressive marks, and the all-at-once approach. The abstract itself doesn’t inspire me; to me the present real world is key: the place where I am, an individual person, a specific group of objects. This focus on The Moment  anchored me amid the upheaval I experienced as a Foreign Service kid. Wierd locales, little plants, pretty rocks, the odd stranger.

I met paintings early. The little girl who saw Las Meninas in person found a shared world on a wall. Through study I found Bonnard, Vuillard, my teacher Robert Bechtle as fellow travelers. With paintings we see things together, and connect in a place we share.