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The arts keep me grounded, and help me to slow down and pay attention to the things that matter. And when I do, I love the experience.  It sometimes happens when I listen to  poetry and music,  when I garden and when I eat a wonderful meal. And it really happens when I quietly listen to the great and fierce beauty of the world and set it down as best I can in the language of paint. I love it when someone looks at my work and responds. Even as strangers we recognize each other, we love what we love and in spite of everything else going on around us, we say “YES”!

I come to painting, always interested in exploring and integrating opposites. I often work on-location and from life, starting with the reality of the landscape in front of me and the still life that call my name. But I’m also interested in ideas, in symbols and in the feelings that “ seeing” and painting evoke in me.

I feel like I’ve strung a tight wire between realism and expressionism; between my love of the process of paying quiet attention to the beautiful, powerful natural world that is in front of me and my strong reaction to it. Learning to pay attention is essential and didn’t come easily to me. I had to learn to let go of the clamor of my inner voice to begin to really see.  I discovered that the “still point” that connects the interior self and the world around us is the bridge. It can be a place of rest and of praise. And in it, I’ve found my reason for working. I try to re-create the changing evidence of that experience. Sometimes the visual response is quiet and meditative and at other times, more emotional and explosive. But it’s always exciting to me; new territory explored and described.

I have an almost primitive belief in the awe and in the beauty of this world. That it can be “awful” is evident as we look at the news. Terrible things are happening every day. But there is also great beauty and goodness, and the bedrock of the natural world that inspires a sense of quiet, joy and gratitude.  Although we can represent our world through many prisms, I choose to work from the “still center” and to celebrate life.  At the root of my painting, I seem to be reaching, as the wonderful contemporary poet David Whyte expresses it, for “this deep golden nut of delight in the center of things.” I believe that we need that today, more than ever.