About

My work is a dramatic and intuitive representation of the Rocky Mountain landscapes. A riot of color covers the canvas in my effort to capture the emotion and grandeur of a place. I respond to the colors of the paint, though the colors aren’t always used in their corresponding location in my painting as in the world. Pyrrol orange comes from the prairie-fire flowers. Cyan blue from the clearest skies seen from high elevations. Quinacridone magenta and Payne’s grey from twilight shadows on red rock hills. Terre verte and raw umber from pine trees and sage. These colors become amplified. They converse with one another and build something new. These colors are not intended to be a direct representation of the world. Complementary colors are mixed to form smoke and smog. The shapes from reality morph into unreasonable landscapes. Mountains grow in size or recede, become transparent to a sunset, or replicate in layer after layer. Thunderheads become a colorful swath of turmoil. Rocks are magnified until an almost microscope view of composite minerals is represented. Birdsongs, wind, sunsets, and smoke grow in a swirling cacophony of color that composes the sky. 

The use of many bright colors is both musing on the beauty of the world around us and in response to the overwhelming influx of news and information that we experience. My work is a processing of daily modern life. It is my way of meditating. When I am in the mountains, my heart sings. Through the process of making artwork, the sense I have in nature is replicated.