Sometimes I’m just stopped in my tracks by what I see. Brilliant sunset colors reflected on telephone wire, an old tree oddly pruned before felling, reflections in puddles, a jumble of weeds.

While I’m drawn to the intersection of culture and ecology, I also enjoy seeing where free association takes me. The place where what I read and see about the world, and how we can possibly understand it, bubbles up and forms its own associations. Shapes become symbols, typography loses meaning and becomes shapes. Signs are misread, things are mis-heard. I’m intrigued by the uncertain forms of things — how little do we need to see before we think we understand what’s going on?

I paint by layering color, both for richness of tone, and as metaphor for how perception is affected by what is not directly seen. I sometimes layer a painting over a drawing, allowing image, color, and intent to show through — layering memories and interpretations. Other times I work from news photos, recombining images to change context. Yet other times it’s much simpler than that — I’m looking for the feeling of a place, what the soul of it is. Color can be a means to chronicle, but it’s also an expressive force, generated by the mind as well as the eye. This seeing, the looking, helps me to look beyond the constructs of what the world tells me to pay attention to. I hope it does the same for you.

I paint primarily with Flashe: it’s suited for modulating transparency, and working on gessoed paper allows me to readily overlay, draw and rework. Color has always been transformative for me — i hope you enjoy it as much as I do.