Travel feeds my life, and my art stems from that, by sharing journeys, albeit not in the usual scenic travel sketchbook way. I do take a great many photographs - rolling farmland under dramatic skies, complex geometric city scenes, ocean shores imprinted by birds' feet, drifted snow - and I do look at them often; they take me back to their moments.
My work processes and reshapes all I see - and even hear - through color and line, ending up with imagery that's been called "meditative" and "ethereal". It explores my interpretation of my world - or the world wherever I go.
For instance, on just a morning walk on a country road, there are webs of design in the broken pavement that create a background for shadows and raindrops. A breeze shuffles through dense leaves, to add motion to the shadows and soft sound effects that set an emotional tone. Even an overcast sky has many unexpected delicate shades of grey. Plane travel offers skies that melt into my mind. Highway driving provides fleeting glimpses of things I don't consciously absorb, not to mention nighttime headlight glitter.
hile I'm working, the art seems to take me over. I'm fully aware of the brush or pen in my hand, but where it goes on the paper is largely instinctual, part of a different journey that takes me into myself.
The power of art for me is in its energy, its motion, the visual tension created by form and color and line. None of this is necessarily evident to viewers - I just want them to feel a reaction to the work, to have a mental conversation, however brief. I guess I feel a responsibility to viewers to offer art worth thinking about, which will only happen if it evokes an emotional response at first sight.
And, of course, I hope that response is a positive one, inviting viewers to explore thoughts of their own, as well as things they see and feel in my art.
