“My intent by floating the planes of both sky and earth within a surround of graded blues is to create a contrast between a specific patch of earth and sky and the timeless infinity of space in which we float. I keep a set of severe limits to create some tension in finding ways to relate the earth and sky or what happens between them. Among these limits is the effort to strip away detail, paring down to the essential landforms and smoothing the flourishes of the brush to express the elemental silence the huge space of the plains evokes in me. The horizon is marked by a red line, but sometimes that line must occur elsewhere in the painting. I think of the red line as the life force.”