To Transcend The Limits of Thought
Artists Statement
Emotions can strongly be prompted by a place. My strongest influences are my immediate environment, life experiences, and the way my mind interprets this information. I work both in the studio and in the landscape researching a wide range of physical and emotional experiences. I am interested in cinematic scenes, with a strong sense of impending drama. The surface becomes visually captivating and eerily mysterious at the same time. My artistic language applied to slightly isolated yet familiar landscapes allows the viewer to transcend a common place to make the insignificant significant. Every paint stroke harbors intent, yet I try to create with abandonment. Though the process of addition and subtraction the viewer is hopefully left with fragments of memories suspended in time. The figures in the work are losing control of what is real and what is imagined, while still being present in their own reality.
I have reached a point in my painting where I feel comfortable with my working method. I am in control of the paint, and able to “play” with compositional elements. In my landscape work, I attempt to remain true to the prairie, manipulating the materials in ways that will express the movement of light and shadow, with the clouds blossoming across the sky. In the studio, I look for new ways to combine stylistic qualities, pushing the composition in new directions in order to express ideas.
