About the Artist
Schooled in Flemish Old Master techniques, I have a great respect and admiration for the traditional systems and applications. Currently, I’m using an expanded palette and a bold, active paint application to portray my realities. I experience life, with all its subtleties and intricacies, as a direct, perceptible experience. Therefore, my subjects are what I observe and are all worthy of depiction by virtue of their existence in the world.
The act of art-making is a series of constant surprises – an experience that is always exhilarating and, at times, even magical. Bringing composition, color, surface and light quality together to create a successful image is my continual struggle, challenge and joy.
Why Sheep?
I’ve been painting Jacob sheep for 19 years. When I began, I had no idea that they would engage me as a visual subject for such a long time. As when I started painting them, I get a charge from the results of the combination of my hand, the medium and the subject. One thing that has evolved through the making of them is that I’ve mostly eliminated any identifiable background. The flat color background accentuates the negative space of the composition, which the sheeps’ horns, legs and body positions create in endless ways. Sheep are often one of the first images we see in our lives. Think of all the nursery rhymes and children’s stories that involve or are about sheep. One of my very first memories is of painted wooden cut-outs of Little Bo Peep and her sheep that my mother had hanging above my crib. To this day I can envision that room and how that “art” was hung. Maybe you, too, have some kind of formative vision in your mind about sheep. Or maybe you connect with them for another reason. Either way, my hope is to engage those who view my sheep paintings on some artistic or emotional level.
Why Interiors?
I find interior spaces to be engaging and compelling. There’s a “lost in time” sense about the rooms that call to me, which I believe is the essence of their allure for me and others. In the book, “The Poetics of Space,” French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, analyzes domestic spaces and how they shape and hold our dreams and memories. “Houses and rooms; cellars and attics; drawers, chests, and wardrobes; nests and shells; nooks and corners: No space is too vast or too small to be filled by our thoughts and our reveries.” I do all of my interior paintings in the actual space. I like to stretch the definition of plein air by including these works in that category – even though I’m inside, I do usually have windows and doors open. I deal with many of the same hurdles that painting outdoors presents, like changing light and visual editing of the subject. Ultimately, I strive not for the simple recording of the environment but a level of transformation, which, to me, must take place for any work to be good art.
Why Plein Air Monotypes?
I’m a painter, and thanks to a simple process, I’m a printmaker, too. To make my monotypes, I do a painting on a piece of plexiglass, dampen a sheet of paper, and transfer that painted image onto the paper using a press or a palm press–that’s it! The process is exciting because there’s a constant surprise element. When transferred, the image is squished, changing my brush strokes and paint placement into something very different than what I applied to the plexiglass. Also, the image is reversed, which is always a bit of a jolt when first viewing the print. I like these surprises – they’ve added an energy to my painting experience which, at times, can become a bit of the “same old, same old.”
