Nature, its tragedies and its glories, has always exhilarated and reassured me. In my practice I try to celebrate the magnificence of the natural landscape and to record our impact on it. I think of this work as a way to reconnect the viewer and myself with our earlier history when we were so much closer to the natural world. I have been influenced by the landscapes of Renaissance artists, especially Pieter Brueghel and also by the American Hudson River School painters such as Thomas Cole. In Brueghel's work the landscape serves as a background foil for the activities of man whereas in Cole's painting the landscape is an almost scientific recording of panoramic vistas. Today there is a different mood to the landscape genre as this society has become aware of our disconnection and destructiveness. Along with documenting these problems, I am working to try to engage the spiritual qualities of nature that overwhelms our everyday existence whenever we can stop and notice.
My ideas come from many sources, sometimes just out walking and photographing, often daydreaming about exotic wildernesses through travel or natural history books. I also paint to find new ways to use combine different media and techniques. Some of this experimentation comes from my experience as a scenic artist and as a printmaker, and I will try various approaches from graffiti and spray techniques to adding etching textures to a painting on wood and plaster.
Sometimes the landscape is a record of the emotions and relationships of human life, as the big circle of the seasons continues past our private triumphs and losses. I find the landscape as subject matter to be almost as limitless as our experiences and attitudes towards it. As we all together, so globally connected, move forward into uncertain prospects, it is the hope and purpose of my practice to work towards creative solutions for a more ethical future.