I see my work as a meditation, drawing on memories, questions, and attempts to settle my ever-shifting perceptions. My goal is to be in the studio experience and go beyond the merely scenic aspect of landscape, toward a larger goal of nuanced visual metaphor.
 
I spend a fair amount of time walking, sometimes with my dog, and often with a camera, taking lots of pictures, especially when the weather or the location is unsuitable for working on-site. I use the camera as a note-taking device to engage my visual memory. Later I’ll sit down with pastels, or paint and brushes to work the page, building the image through a gathering of marks, lines, tones, and colors. I spend a lot of time layering the image, gradually building a rather ambiguous two-dimensional structure, re-imagining, and often simply looking at the image. Through a layering of multiple efforts an image forms. It can appear naturalistic, recognizable, and even pleasant, but often carrying another aspect which is less certain and perhaps more open to interpretation.
 
Through drawing and painting within the open-ended themes of landscape, I cultivate awareness of my own inner wildness, as it echoes the wider world. The fragile and fleeting, as well as enduring qualities I find in nature are likewise within me. Not separate but interconnected, like past and present, figure and ground.
 
Drawing allows for multi-layered interpretations of the visual, and much re-visioning. The process engages all my senses and I feel that I was made for this practice. When I’m working, I linger with an awareness of nature as a living presence, embodying source, refuge, and the great unknown. The larger theme of landscape provides many points of departure and return.