Landscape Paintings
My figure and my landscape work may look very different, but I am concerned
with many of the same issues in both. My landscape paintings convey
the nearly ecstatic experience I often have when I open my eyes and my whole being
to the wonder that exists around us.
I had lived in Iowa in the early 1980s when I was just learning to paint. Many
of the paintings I did then were landscapes. For the following fifteen years,
most of my paintings were of the figure. When I moved back to Iowa in the 1990s,
I never imagined that I'd return to painting landscapes. It was the textures and
colors of the vegetation, along with the strong patterns formed by different plants
and land forms, that drew me back to plein air painting.
Duck Pond II
oil on canvas
Most of the landscapes I represent have been manipulated by humans. I am not
looking for pristine or idealized nature. The power that we can tap into in nature
is accessible in corn fields, constructed duck ponds, restored prairie, virgin
forests, and even suburban backyards. There isn't much truly wild nature left
anymore. Our task is to find the unchanging in the mutilated, the sacred in the
ordinary.
I paint most of my landscapes in late afternoon light, a moment when the sun
rays skim nearly parallel to the ground. At this liminal passing from day to night,
light streams through leaves, through blades of grass, through dry grain stalks,
revealing searing yellows and acid greens, unveiling an intrinsic intensity which
is only unlocked when rays of light flow through these living forms before reaching
our eyes. In observing and painting the brightness and saturation of these colors,
along with the crimson of the setting sun and the deep blues and violets of the
heightening shadows, I am celebrating a magical world.
The methods I use in the landscapes are different from those of the figure
paintings. I often begin by blocking in several sections of the canvas with a
layer or two of color. Sometimes these colors are the complement of the color
of what I see in a particular area. When I am content with the basic composition
and color scheme, I go over this wash with specific shapes and strokes. When I
paint en plein air, I'm intensely aware of the changing light, the passing of
time as day becomes night. Perhaps my painting these landscapes is an attempt
to hold onto a fleeting ecstatic moment.
Artist's Statement
Awe, Ecstasy, and the Sacred
An Experimental Approach to Living and Art-making
Contemporary and Postmodern
Artist as Missionary
Artist's Statement for the Figure Paintings
Artist's Statement for Landscape Paintings
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