I have been painting landscapes for a decade. I used to think these paintings were about specific places, or a certain experience of a place. In many ways this is true. But I notice now there are forms repeating - certain shapes, or a certain kind of space: an enclosure or a fold or a dip (all those ditches), and much of this is emphasized, manipulated, or just plain made up. Now when I see places like this, say - a sand ditch along the NY Northway, a gravel pit, a cultivated field, or just a peculiar bend in the road - I'm attracted to it, and I make a mental note. It seems now I look for the places that are already in my head. If I can't find it out there, I'll attempt to create it. Holes? - I like looking at them, I like creating them. Roads? - I am always driving. It seems the beginning is usually that simple. There is a tension between form and what's going on in the real world. And the form (dips, ditches, open fields, etc.) isn't just a product of what I see, but combines what I know about constructing paintings with some deep and as yet unconscious memory system with what I see in the landscape. There may be a story hidden in the painting, which I myself am still only vaguely aware of. Small, intimate, sometimes intricate, full of illusion, or twisted space - the drama of broken ground: pages in a story. They feel like safe places; then, other times, like dangerous places: but necessary places - something has happened, or will happen, and everything has, or will react to it. Often there are only signs of absent people: who made the tracks, cut the stumps, lit the smoldering fires? I still can say I work from memory, but at times not sure where the original memory comes from.
 |
 |
 |
| Near Hoffman, 12 x 12 inches, 2007 | Lake Ontario, 12 x 12 inches, 2006. | Grassy Lake, 14 x 14 inches, 2004. |
 |
.jpg) |
 |
| Black Trees 12 x 12 inches, 2004. | Untitled (blue water, 14 x 14 inches, 2007 | Winter woods, 12 x 12 inches, 2006. |