he American landscape has been the primary subject of my paintings since 1970. However, this passionate love that I have for the land can be traced to my childhood experiences. I have many clear recollections of hours and days spent as a young boy feeling as one with nature—of tramping through richly varied fields which seemed to roll back endlessly into space, of coming to a welcome fence line and seeing again a new adventure in the field beyond. I recall long walks through fall woods of sacred pines, birches and hardwoods. I remember the wooded bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan—the pounding waves, the foghorn, the icebergs, the summer sandy beaches—and gazing out in awe at the lake, it’s colors and movement, and that inspiring, ever-changing sky, filled with the spirit of eternity. I can honestly say that the landscape sensations of form, color, and light, which I take in today, are as intense and as satisfying as ever, and continue to serve as my primary inspiration.
          Central to my research is the use of visual devices employed to create illusions of deep space, the use of color and value to communicate atmospheric effects of space, and the use of technique (brushstroke, blending, layering, texture) to create movement and energy—a quiet sense of life and immediacy. I am also very much concerned with communicating the unique mood of each landscape, attempting to visually convey that tangible natural world before me and to transform it into a meaningful spiritual experience.
          I am always looking for relationships that articulate and suggest space—the illusion of deep space. In other words, I carefully compose my paintings in a formal manner, artistically considering the underlying and inherent abstract relationships of form, value, pattern, color, space, texture, and line.
          I think there’s a spiritual aspect to space in a painting. I try to look beyond the surface appearance of things. I try to capture the spirit of a place, the poetry, the mood. I am certain that many of you share the same experiences that I do when gazing out on the land. Your mind and eye, in silence and in an attitude of reflection, search out the horizon and the incredibly expressive sky above, and project your aspirations, goals, hopes and spiritual longings into that all-enveloping space.
          On occasion, I’ve painted landscapes in which figures play an integral role in nature. But, the vast majority of my paintings are not anecdotal or storytelling, and therefore the figure would intrude or become a distraction because it would carry symbolic meanings. However, there is plenty of evidence of man’s hand. Many of my paintings have barns or houses or roads or some other evidence of man’s presence, signs of man’s interaction with nature. As the viewer of my painting, what I wish to convey is that you are ultimately the person or figure in my landscape.
          The actual experience of painting on location is very meaningful to me. It’s the totality of the outdoor experience that informs the painting. The landscape is changing continually before your eyes. That may make the act of painting more difficult, but, by working on location, you may experience that rare, unique moment you can’t experience in any other way.
          More and more I am drawn to the timeless, unchanging aspects of nature. I now deeply sense the limited number of times that we are granted to experience the wondrous seasons, the first crocus, the constant flow of water, the full moon, the first and the last snow.