Falling Leaves, 36x48, Oil

  Ironwood Charmer, 12x16, Oil

My work is about capturing the energy and spirit I sense in the landscape through bold applications of paint applied with a palette knife. Plein air painting is the starting point for my larger contemporary studio paintings. Painting on location with a palette knife,  I search for strong colorful compositions and paint the impression of the light on my subject. In the studio, I push the color and shapes of my plein air experience with trees, clouds and water into a series of larger contemporary modernist paintings. Abstracting the shape and color of a scene, without laboring detail, with impasto strokes of a palette knife loaded with color stirs the possibilities of what is present and allows you the viewer to sense and remember the beauty and spirit of the earth through your own experience.

A Native American friend once said to me, 'that to Native Peoples, everything has a spirit, the air we breathe, trees, animals-even rocks', when she commented on seeing the shape of a bear in the rocks I had painted.  If I have done my job as an artist with light, color and form, and you can see the bear in the rocks, or in some way your spirit is lifted, then we are speaking the same language.