Artist Statement:

     I am an oil painter. My current work explores primarily landscapes and I gravitate towards traditional compositions and subjects. I typically start a piece by photographing natural scenery that I find pleasing. The initial photography stage is integral to my process. When making reference photos I am attracted to the little things in nature that go unnoticed.  I am inspired by the way the evening glow lights up a tree and casts a shadow on the ground.  I am amazed by how the blue sky reflects in a pond and is interrupted only by small ripples.  While I love traveling to spectacular locations to take reference photos I find I don’t need to. I spend a lot of time traveling back roads and most of my subjects are scenes I find on my way to school or home, during the glow of dawn and dusk. These places I’ve driven by over and over often have new surprises for me, as the seasons and light of a day change the smallest details.

When I paint I typically work in 3 stages.  The first stage is a rough sketch in paint.  It is a general outline of composition and color. This is when I block in shapes and relationships.  The second stage is when I get more in depth with my subject, adding a variety of hues, getting specific with details and figuring out where the light goes. In this stage I routinely push the values past what is there in the reference, to see how far I can push the light and dark, how much I can exaggerate the parts I find appealing and bring the scene to life. The third stage is where I refine the details, and bring back my exaggerations, searching for a nice balance between shadow and light, hard and soft, focal point and background.

For me, the hardest part of painting is knowing when to stop working on a piece. There seems always to be more I’d like to do, but there is a point in each painting where it begins to be overworked and I lose my love for it.  My biggest challenge is to step back from the work and stop while it feels good, to know when my time with the work is up.