A Suggestion of Landscape

This most recent work explores images and systems from nature. This imagery portrays nature in an expansive, all-inclusive manner, incorporating the scientific as well as the idyllic associations with nature and our world. I attempt to portray this broad range of nature under the guise of the catalogue or through the suggestion of landscape. Each layer is a momentary response to the previously painted layer. The visual associations become empirical. The resulting image, hopefully, strikes a memory or sensation of place in our collective minds that is for each viewer a direct connection to nature.

The mediums I have chosen to work with in creating these images relate directly and were chosen specifically for referencing nature. The ingredients used in my paintings are beeswax, earth pigments, animal hide glue and wood. I make the paint myself using historic encaustic formulas. The process is very seductive and over the last fifteen years I have grown dependant on the faint smell of honey, earth, and wood while I work. The encaustic process requires access to electric hot plates and numerous containers of heated wax. This restriction makes it impossible to work directly from nature so I rely on the appropriation of images from historic painting, drawing, design and my memories of nature observed to create these paintings.