Artist Statement

I live next to the natural landscape of Northern California.  I walk in it daily, soaking up the beauty, seasonal growth and death, curves both hollow and hill, and the lights and shadows of spaces large and small. My paintings are about the experience of moving through nature –  in the landscape and within my own nature.  They’re also about the simple pleasure of the presence of light, both near and far, and paint itself.

I have been meditating for over 15 years and I have come to know a term in Buddhism called the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows.  When I’m walking in the wilderness I often feel myself at peace and  one with nature.  I find myself deeply moved by the beauty around me, and the joy of this life as well as the grief.

Love and beauty, sadness and loss are on either side of a coin for me.  These paintings are a record of my travels through nature, and the embodiment of the joy and the sorrow of a life lived, sometimes, with spaciousness.

My paintings are from here: my physical neighborhood, here in the middle of my family and community, and here in my body. And they are about large expanses of light that resonate within me as hope. 

At the start of a piece I use oil paint like watercolor – applying a transparent wash.  This sets the deep space and the quality of light in the distance.  I then add thicker layers of paint that move closer, toward the viewer.  I play with layering of different spatial realities where deep space, middle ground and foreground don’t always match up. The quality of expansiveness is what’s meaningful to me as I capture a sense of breath and vastness. Some of this happens very consciously.  And some of it just flows out my brushes as I work.    

I’m painting the embodiment of hope, spirit, and the simultaneous grief that comes with it.  I experience all of this within the depth and breadth of a spacious landscape.