"Landscape Paintings: A Dialogue Between Land and Water"

I am a painter currently working on landscape images that integrate a representational look with a painterly airbrush technique. My paintings document the visual interaction that occurs between small streams and ponds with their surrounding landscape environments. It is also my intention to compose works that communicate a feeling of peace, and invite the viewer to enter comfortable image spaces, evocative of contemplative states of being.

Involved in an ongoing exploration of the forest preserves of Long Island, upstate New York and Massachusetts, I photograph the landscape in search for images that conform to my concept of the ideal. My paintings are constructed from these photographs, which I translate onto the canvas using a loose freehand airbrush technique.

In composing the paintings I build upon specific pictorial elements, which I believe induce moods of quiet contemplation. The following is a brief description of some of the visual ingredients I capture in my photographs and incorporate into the paintings. The picture space is clearly defined and limited. It usually opens from a foreground of water and leaves, leads to a middle area of trees, and ends in a background of not too distant, sunlit foliage. I am especially interested in the dialogue between water and land, and search for images containing small streams, lakes, and ponds. The resultant paintings are representational compositions of landscape and water, in which I concentrate on the formal, organizational relationships discoverable within such natural settings. Qualities such as reflection, glare, transparency and texture are orchestrated into cohesive, sunlit landscapes. I unify my compositions within a consistent, permeating sunlight that reveals itself in various forms of luminous nuances throughout the painted surface.