Gallery of Recent Work

Work in Progress

These days I am doing more painting than stitching, working mostly in oils and mostly plein air. The Nevada series 2009 paintings were done while I was artist-in-residence at the Workspace of the Goldwell Open Air Museum in Beatty Nevada. Most are small plein air pieces. In addition to the paintings that weren't sold at the final open house, I brought home two large semi-abstracts that are products of spending six weeks in that desert landscape. The summer of 2009 found me doing a lot of on-site (plein air) work, in and around Portland, on the Oregon Coast, and on the hottest days of this year, on Mt. Tabor, a park up the street from our southeast Portland home.

I am interested in ways of seeing -- not ways of expressing myself, but ways my brain deals with the external world and then allows me to put brush to canvas. I am convinced that much of what we think of as "realistic" landscape, whether city or country, is really photo-realism. I seldom do photo-realism and, except in unusual circumstances, do not paint from photographs. My theory of visual perception has some conceptual similarities to those found in the writings and theories of David Hockney, Rackstraw Downes, William L. Fox, and Trevor and Ryan Oakes. Each of these theorists takes issue with conventional notions of perspective and visual perception. While I call my paintings "wonky," I am quite serious about attempting to see with all my visual perceptivities, not merely those taught me by photographs and Renaissance paintings.