Artist's Statement - Interpreting Landscape

In a familiar place, conditions of time and light will allow the observer to see a landscape in a new way, surprising the viewer. My goal is to create landscapes which also produce that impression.

Seasons, weather, the time of day, all serve to create a specific moment of relationship between the forms and tones of land, sky, water and foliage. I use digital photos to record references, because this phenomenon is transient. In an hour, weather will change, light will change, and all of what attracted me in the first place will be altered. I then experiment with sketches to find the particular relationships between color, shape and tone which will dramatically convey a sense of the experience of being in that place.

My subjects are farmland and waterways in Franklin and Hampshire counties in Western Massachusetts, which is also known as the Pioneer Valley. There is still a lot of agricultural activity throughout the region, and also a good amount of land preservation which provides a strong visual link to the past. This area has also been the subject of paintings for over a hundred years, and I like to think that I'm contributing in a small way to the history of this unique region, by recording some aspects of the landscape today.

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