Artist’s Statement

I paint primarily in soft pastels,  en plein air in rural Western Massachusetts. I do whatever it takes to make the painting sing as beautifully as what’s before me–to do justice to the glory of nature. I love painting on gessoed paper. The uneven surface captures brushstrokes and breaks up color, contributing to a feeling of life, air, and light.

I can’t include the touch of the breeze, the sounds of the birds and wind, or the sensation of sun in my eyes or on my skin. Instead, I reach for colors a little brighter, a little more saturated than what lies before me, layering thicker and softer pigments over translucent washes to show all the hints of color in a shadow or a sunlit plane. I scribble and scrub my underpainting, staying fast and loose to get some of the world's energy onto paper.

I paint what I see as an act of love for the world, for the very fact that we see in color, that we have the capacity to see beauty at all. It might have been otherwise. We might not have evolved to see and respond to beauty in nature. That we do is a gift, a miracle, and I devote myself to the worship of that miracle through painting.