LEMOLO is a Chinook tribal word meaning “wild” or “untamed”. Most of these abstracted landscapes are not based on specific places, but are conglomerations of the wild places I’ve been, the memories and impressions that endure in my mind. These untamed places speak to and connect us with the raw, earthly spirit inborn in each of us. Whether we realize it or not, these places call to us. We long to take in their scent, to feel their cool breezes, hear the sounds of their rushing waters and rustling leaves. Each painting begins as a simple painted sketch, worked into over and over until a scene begins to appear. That scene will change and shift over time as I strive to give way my control of the composition, instead letting the wilderness appear before me. As the composition takes shape, it may remind me of a certain place– the Olympic wilderness, the Lost Coast of California, the North Cascades, the Northern Rockies. But I strive to keep the space loose and abstracted enough for the viewer to be able to find themselves in their own version of wilderness. It is in the end that the graphic lines come in– representing an interruption, an intrusion– whether upon our own experiences of a place or whether we are the intruders ourselves.