My Work

Throughout my life as an artist I've tended to work in series beginning with my years as a map illustrator and on through landscapes (I like to think of them as Memoryscapes because they are not actual places but either memories of places or imaginary places) in watercolor and oil (see Memoryscapes in Oil and Memoryscapes in Watercolor under the pull-down Portfolio tab). I'm never painting what's in front of me, never trying to make it look "realistic" or like a photograph. But it must feel true. I want the color to be intense in the way a memory can be so vivid, real but yet unreal at the same time. For me, no painting is ever really finished it just finally reaches a point where I stop, but even then I'll probably revisit that painting at some future time (see The Stopping Tree at right).

 

When I'm painting I'm always remembering what was or what could be - the oceans and rivers and woods and faraway places. In the process of painting these memories it's the duality of nature that interests me - not just the tranquil beauty but also the violent force, the calm before the storm or the storm as it rages and the calm that follows - the moment before and the moment after (see A Little Island at right and Caribbean Morning). Those memories could come from my childhood or a more recent memory, but it's always something remembered, something longed for - the scent of the pine woods, the ocean's surf, owls calling at twilight, catching sight of an island across the horizon, the stars and the moon. Sometimes it might be something spiritual and transcendental, something unknown but felt and sensed. The mystery of nature.

 

Throughout my work the horizon is important because that's where I've always felt my memories lie, just over that horizon. As I paint, the horizon remains fluid throughout the stages as I work and can shift positions up or down several times during a painting or might even disappear entirely. But once I've fixed that horizon (or not) and I've discovered what lies beyond and out of sight, I begin to think about a more naturalistic light and color.

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But long before Memoryscapes it was Falling, Africa, Illustrated Maps, and others including Blood Trail, a series of large found object installation pieces (you can see these various styles and series at the portfolio pulldown tab). I've always liked challenging myself with changes in style and content but he common thread that runs through all my work is memory. Memory of place, and imagination.

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In my newest series, The Consequence of Color, I'm exploring each individual painting as it exists unto itself, apart from representing anything at all, but becoming an actual thing - like a stone or a tree or an animal or a person. You can call it "a painting" as you would call a tree a tree, but each one is different in shape and size and color and each one means something different to each different person. We see what our minds tell us to see. And when the light strikes a painting (or a tree, etc.) then again it changes everything - the consequence of light and color.

 

So many artists have influenced my work and sensibility, but probably none more than the ancient Japanese landscape artists. At the age of five I was taught to paint and draw by a Japanese artist and I knew even then I would also become an artist or better said, I think I realized I was born an artist. I lived in Japan from the age of five to seven and those memories of that little coastal fishing village have stayed with me and formed my way of seeing the world. There was so much color for me to see - the green lush mountains (see my piece in the series The Consequence of Color  titled Monkey Mountain), the reds of the boiling hot springs, the blues and yellows of the mythical statues. My series titled Falling came from a memory of a falling mourning dove I saw in those dark woods behind our house in Japan. So, other than Japan, throughout my life I've lived and traveled in many places in the world like Southeast Asia, a couple of years in Germany and two more in the South of Spain, a couple more living in West Africa (see Africa series), and then drifting and working my way through the American South and the islands of the South Pacific and Caribbean. I believe that experience of traveling and living in different countries and cultures, more than anything, has formed my sense of the world in general and landscape specifically. And I'm sure traveling and living abroad led to my love of maps and my years as a map illustrator (see my Illustrated Maps portfolio).

 

And of course who has not been influenced by the great Vincent Van Gogh (both for his work and his life (see my tribute to him, Crows over Wheatfield in my oil portfolio and also, He Lived on Bread and Coffee and Sunflowers). And for me, the one and only Francisco José de Goya's Black Paintings and his etchings of war.

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So, after a long and happy life lived in paint I find myself still in love with the paint itself whether watercolor, acrylic or oil and whether it's representational or abstract. And still in love with all you artists out there that create your wonderful works, now and past, and more than ever still and always in love with the muse that shares my love of art, my heart, Christina Rosalia.