Looser and in tune with some mysterious thang.

Paintings completed after my move in March 2020 to El Rito, NM. Some plein air, others began as plein air and were finished in the studio from memory. Most of the village scenes were painted with a photo reference.

Primarily plein air paintings. I began setting up my easel by the Willamette River and along streets. At this time I was only working from observation.

Some of the first paintings from photo reference. I began using acrylic in the studio and then switched to back to oil. I am still plein air painting - but for the first time I begin using photo references to capture the beauty I see in wet, reflective streets. Additionally, my work begins to scale up.

Paintings from residencies at Playa Summer Lake 2012 (4 weeks) and 2016 (2 weeks). In 2012 my goal for the residency was to move my work in a more abstract or intuitive direction. To explore painting the landscape in ways other than through representation. Notably, it resulted in a series of stripe paintings. Painting wet into wet oil to develop the colors I viewed in the landscape was a breakthrough - and continues to this day.

In Portland we had a record snowfall in 2014. I rose at dawn to photograph my neighborhood with the snowy, unplowed roads. The colors were surreal. Later I worked from these images in the studio. Exhibited at both Annie Meyer Gallery and Seattle Art Museum Gallery.

MNP Artists Residency. Painted on location and later abstract color studies painted in the studio. All were exhibited in the Desert Light Gallery in the historic Kelso Station Visitor's Center from May - June 2018.
The color studies are depictions of sunset colors (Song and Flow), Prickly Pear Cactus (Smooth), and yellow flowering Chamisa that was bedecked with butterflies (Humm). The continuous lines initiating these paintings are intuitive responses to what I was viewing.

Begun July 4, 2018. Also called 'Disaster Restoration'. This series was a response to the election of Donald Trump and my thoughts about being American. I recalled being a kid in 1976 living in Colorado. It was the state's centennial and the country's bicentennial. A big deal. I recall feeling good about being American - and having a sense of nationwide community. This series began as a kind of accident when I decided to paint over an old painting of Division Street with a business titled "Disaster Restoration". I painted Bachelor Buttons from the garden - and the deep blue reminded me of the American flag and I ran with it. Later paintings explore mixing starts and stripes with plant and city imagery. Also I found myself painting in dichotomies of palettes; natural earth tones vs. primary.

Exhibited in Portland at Waterstone Gallery. These pieces were a deep exploration into imposing floating energy/intuitive continuous lines over streetscapes. At times I imagined a butterfly flitting over the surface, over the view. The paintings explore the depth of presence that a realistic image alone cannot portray.

SAM Gallery, TASTE exhibit 2019. This exhibit brought to fruition the streetscapes I had developed over a bit more than a decade. At this stage I introduced various elements (stars) and intuitive color and paint application.

From September - December I was an artist in residence in Taos. It was remarkable and fruitful. I was one of a cohort of 12 other creatives. The thickets paintings are from the view outside the studios HUGE window. The paintings I created varied in approach. Color studies, plein air, memory and from photos I took. All informing one another.

2019 Waterstone Gallery Exhibit

from 2006-2014 I focused on printmaking in Portland. These are from Bite Studio and a workshop at Crown Point Press.

Painted from 2013-2018. Plein air. The Stripe paintings from my 2012 Playa Residency directly informed my approach to these paintings.