**Lane View: After the Rain**

Painted *dal vero* from the campus of Lane Community College, where the artist taught for more than twenty years, this work transforms a familiar view into a study of structure, atmosphere, and light. The distant hillside glows beneath a passing storm, while broad masses of forest, field, and sky are organized into a clear macchia of lights and darks. Rather than describing every tree or cloud, the painting seeks the larger truth of the landscape—its underlying architecture.

The vigorous brushwork remains visible throughout, especially in the sky where bold, calligraphic strokes suggest clouds in constant formation and dissolution. Each brush mark functions as both description and abstraction, creating a living surface that recalls the *non-finito* traditions of the I Macchiaioli while remaining firmly rooted in the Oregon landscape. The result is a distinctly American verismo: a painting that values direct observation, yet allows the expressive language of paint itself to reveal the deeper character of place.

For the artist, this scene was more than a pleasant vista. It was part of the daily rhythm of life at Lane Community College, a place of teaching, learning, and artistic growth. In that sense, the painting becomes both landscape and memory—a tribute to a landscape observed over decades and distilled into a few decisive strokes of color and light.