I am originally from Wilton, a small town in western Maine. I completed my Bachelor of Fine Arts, in Painting and Drawing at the University of Southern Maine in 2003. Upon graduation I moved to Oregon for 2 1/2 years where I worked in galleries as an attendant and picture framer, and hiked incessantly in the Cascade mountains. In 2006 I began graduate studies at the University of New Hampshire, and will culminate the program in May 2008 with a Master of Fine Arts in Painting.
Statement
Nature
contains the elements, in color and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard
contains the notes of all music.
But the artist is born to pick and choose…as the musician gathers his
notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos, glorious
harmony.
–James Abbot McNeill Whistler
The
landscape contains a wealth of information that I am constantly attempting to
organize. I seek complicated
spaces with an abundance of information and consider it my task as a painter to
find order in such places. The places select to paint on site often involve a
juxtaposition of man-made structure and nature. These motifs are both chaotic
and dense but have moments of order and legibility. All of these qualities I
aim to convey through the paint.
I am a landscape painter as it provides me space to think, breathe, and be in the moment. Increasingly, I find it important and comforting to be reminded that this world is larger than myself. Every time I go out to paint I shed the confinement of everyday life and open my eyes to a world full of possibilities and to the freedom of just being.
Inspired
by American landscape painters such as Burchfiield, Hartley,Inness,
and Hopper as well as contemporary landscape painters who voiced their vision
of the world, in a language true to themselves; I have
worked towards developing my own language and ideas about the landscape.
I situate myself
in the landscape in specific positions that are outside looking in and my
intention is to convey a sense of wanting to look into places that are in some
cases private. At the very core my paintings suggest both a separation and
connection between the viewer (initially me) and the places depicted. In a
sense the paintings also speak of confinement and freedom, in subject matter
and idea. I revel in the in
between spaces, often beyond the subject itself. These
are the places I am not sure people take the time to notice, or even feel
comfortable stopping to look at, but I am captivated within them for hours
My
love and dedication to the landscape is shared with a love for the paint and
the physical act of painting. As a
painting becomes more involved I find myself just as enthralled within it in,
as I do in the landscape. There is
a back and forth conversation between what the painting needs, what I see, and
what I envision. I am constantly working the surface of the canvas, editing and
revising, until I find a particular balance. Surface, texture, mark, light,
color and paint all become interwoven into a physical act of distinguishing
positive and negative space. All of these elements, when successful, harmonize
and balance creating a final product that is more evocative of the site chosen than
descriptive. My paintings attempt to locate and engage the viewer with those
spaces in which I find myself lost; lost in the paint and lost in a state of
being.
