I paint and draw every day – most of the time outdoors, whenever and wherever. I continue to wood carve, also based on natural themes. I enjoy the experiences that nature provides during the various seasons of the year, and during springtime last year installed a show of paintings of mine with that in mind, “Painting experiences in Nature”, at North Shore Community College.
My artwork is evolving experientially; working outside so much, in all kinds of weather, has slowly instilled in me an interest in what the particular weather conditions might cause to happen. If it’s really cold outside, I am interested in what effects will occur on the watercolor sheet. Or if it’s raining, what kind of textures will result.
The natural world is a never-ending source of inspiration and artistic variety for me; essentially, the weather conditions in play allow me to enter into 'dialogue' with what I am experiencing, and sometimes contribute significantly to the compositional moment. Although my technical approaches follow a traditional under painting foundation, I have recently been experimenting with laying in brighter stronger, primary colors at the underpainting stage, then modulating the colors with wet into wet over painting in order to create a more luminous effect which also helps to create a greater depth of field.
Another development of late is to not totally finish the painting to its edges. That way, I feel the image seems to emerge from the canvas or paper,in a sense from nature; not as an attempt to replicate what I see, but to to evolve or transform what I see in nature.
