“Nature is always the same, and yet its appearance is always changing. It is our business as artists to convey the thrill of nature’s permanence along with the elements and the appearance of all its changes”
Cezanne (in Gasquet, 1959)
Through the process of painting or drawing I concretize what my senses and intellect experience. While working, I am involved in the act of looking and translating. The resulting artwork is at once a surprise discovery, as well as a familiar recollection defined by my involvement with the process. Because nature is in constant flux it allows me to continually interpret and re-interpret what I see.
Landscape is an ideal subject. It offers an open-ended pictorial task made up of objective and subjective elements. It is made up of physical realities (e.g., texture of trees, shape of leaves, light changes) as well as the understanding that landscapes are the summation of social and historical constructions (e.g., urban forest, conception of landscape wild or domestic space) that make it ideal for personal assessment.
My work is the result of assessing the visual world through the process of direct observation and of the translation of the total experience by way of drawing and painting. Consistent and sustained in-situ involvement with the landscape for the purpose of art-making is an active potent dance that requires my presence of mind, body and soul. In order to be aware of and translate the patterns in nature I work only while on-site. Once I select a site, I return to the same spot day after day until intuitively the picture is realized. This process may take weeks, months and in some cases years. I believe that this continual involvement with the landscape allows me to understand the complexity found in nature and how to represent it in pictorial terms. For me, the process of painting or drawing is a blend of physical and metaphysical experiences.
It’s a journey, a process, experiencing a place as a picture and the picture as a place.
LS Aug 2025