Current Work

My current work is available at my online store.

Statement

Every painting is a puzzle. I often have a plan, but rarely does everything fall into place on the first attempt. Some paintings are extended battles, others snap together with surprising speed. Changing one element – tone, hue, or texture – has an effect on everything else, and the process of finding balance between precision and looseness is the most satisfying part of solving the puzzle.

Capturing three-dimensional tricks of the light on a two-dimensional surface makes me happy. With my Silverware Bouquet paintings, I kept finding interesting reflections that make visual sense but verge on abstraction. Whether it is a fabric pattern bouncing off a convex steel surface, a straight line bending through transparent glass, or the inferred surrounding space that the viewer’s eye can’t help but recognize, I always find them interesting to make.

With landscape painting, I feel like I’m standing at the trailhead of a very well trodden, but very tall mountain path. The struggles of composition, cliche avoidance, and consistency of technique are real. The work in this exhibit comes from Vermont’s mud season and stick season, times of year when “beautiful” might not be the first adjective to come to mind. But I enjoyed (trying to capture) the color of Hardwick’s dreary November mornings, the golden light of late December afternoons, and long shadows on muddy back roads at the first signs of winter’s thaw.