Artist Statement

I am writing this from the studio in Port Townsend, Washington. Port Townsend is located on the NE corner of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, 30 miles north and west of Seattle. The peninsula is surrounded by the Salish Sea and home to the Olympic Mountains and the Olympic National Park. I have lived in Washington State since the early 1980's and before that l lived in Colorado where I grew up and in Utah where I spent summers.

This land is the ancestral home of the Chimakum People and then is the home of S’Klallam (or Klallam) Nation. I acknowledge that I am present on indigenous land, the traditional lands of the S"Kallam people. I honor my ongoing connection to this community, past, present and future.

A painting practice is personal and that deep work takes place privately in the studio. However, the creative process is complete when the work is shared with the viewer, who can engage and give the work a new life. Even incorporating or integrating the piece into their own personal enviroment and lives. This process of making/creating and then sharing images makes us interdependent.  I enjoy working for the viewer as much as love working for myself.

This work really thrives when I am working in series. One image then suggesting another direction or idea. A series could number two or three or may include many paintings over a number of years.

I use oil paint and charcoal and work on canvas, paper & board. For the last several years I have been working with subjects related to maps, borders, families/friends, immigration, extinctions and the climate emergency.

A goal is to make a strong image that is well crafted, original and interesting. Visual art can be a powerful agent that can highlight fragility, injustices and document current affairs and subtle changes and bear witness to emerging conflicts.

Our mutual/shared humanity is the thread that I strive toward in this creative process. Often the work I make may move from representational/recognizable subjects to non objective/ abstract subjects, then moving back again or become a combination of the two.  

Being open to and encouraging surprise, allowing the subject matter to emerge and to become known is at the core of this process.

Painting is my feeble human attempt to make some sense of the unknowable & to express the inexpressible