ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a landscape painter. It is somewhat of a risk to work with this theme because of the generations of artists and others that have sentimentalized the notion of landscape.

I do not paint views, I paint experiences that show my feelings of places and seared memories. My first real connection to place was the red dirt of my childhood Georgia where I imagined that the stained earth was colored by my ancestor’s blood. I grew up roaming the Southern landscape and after thirty years of pursuing place as a theme, I know the land. The earth at my feet and the sky above influence me each time I paint a new place where I attempt to express a message and feeling that points elsewhere.

I respond to an innate sense of place. I choose to call on elements of nature for ideas because I understand the structural chaos and sublime presence in landscape. My identity as a landscape painter should not mark me as sentimental or nostalgic because I perceive the landscape as a fresh, relevant, intimidating and maddeningly complex subject.

During my fellowship in Ireland, I often worked outdoors where I experienced all of the drama and beauty of the Irish countryside, and also felt a unique sense of history and purpose. I also sometimes encountered a silent melancholy in the landscape where ancient peat stained the waters a dark tea color. That reminded me, like the Georgia clay, of some living mystery.

The places in my paintings are animated by water, sky, weather, land, trees or large flocks of birds. They color my landscapes and I hope to evoke new mysteries with drama, history and purpose.