Artist Statement

It seems I am always drawn to quiet places, those places where you can sit, relax, take nothing and seemingly everything in, places which are easily overlooked in our busy, day-to-day grind. These are the sites where I am able to recharge, reflect, to begin anew. Recently, I have found through my graduate studies in Florence, Italy and in northwestern Ohio that I have become entranced with these seemingly mundane spots, most notably the cloisters of ancient churches and the worked fields of our own backyards. It may be the myriad of their rhythms, the lack of overpowering stimuli, the evocation of timelessness, the knowledge that everything has had the imprint of human hands that I have found my solace in these locales.

My technique reflects the places I reproduce. By using a vocabulary of repetitive, simple shapes and color fields, the clutter of the details become less important while still being able to infuse the images with a calm and serenity without losing focus on the forms of the land. Either the sky or the earth dominate the canvases as the colors become scratched, worked, layered in an attempt to reveal the underlying workings of man while still showing the dominance of nature.