SOME PLACE, NOT BERLIN

Traveling back and forth across America, I observed the changes in landscape and architecture from region to region. Places have always punctuated my experience and my process as a maker. My lyrical Impressionist imagery is focused on boundaries and divisions, manmade and natural, such as rivers, bridges, fences, roads and borders. My painterly methods include stain painting and monoprinting. I use a restricted palette, boiled down to the minimal essence of colors in a location.

My work allows me to explore the environment at a particular moment and to freeze the forms that represent that moment in time, observing the degradation of land, gentrification, decline, developments and demolitions. My urbanscapes are inspired by the enigmatic, devoid of human activity, reflecting on our contemporary estrangement brought about by dormitory style suburbs and commuter cities. The process is hunting and gathering images, searching for an experience, or proof of experiences past.

These landscapes are deliberately ambiguous, allowing the viewer to call up their own memories of familiar forms. My intention is to give the viewer a sense of déjà vu, and mystification over how to reconcile befuddling familiarity. Painting requires that natural pigments are mined from the earth. Cobalt and iron oxides are extracted to the great detriment of the landscape, then processed, heated and altered in a sumptuous colorful ooze, then packaged in tubes and sold to the artist, to render the image of the landscape, drawing a connection between creation, degradation and the sublime.

Remembering Manchester

Painted while in residence at the Contemporary Artist Center Woodside in Troy, NY. 2014 Acrylic on Canvas. 60"x54" Acrylic on Canvas

Every Trestle CSX Richmond

Old Norfolk and Southern Trestle along the Kanawha Canal, Richmond, VA Painted while in residence at the Art Students League of New York, Vytlacil, Sparkill, NY. 2015 Acrylic on Linen 32x36

George Washington Bridge

George Washington Bridge, Manhattan, NYC Painted while in residence at the Art Students League of New York, Vytlacil, Sparkill, NY. 2015 Monoprint, Oil on Paper 14x18

Whitestone Bronx

Whitestone Bridge, Bronx, NY Painted while in residence at the Art Students League of New York, Vytlacil, Sparkill, NY. 2015 Monoprint, Oil on Paper 14x18

Richmond Frankly

Shockoe Bottom, Kanawha Canal, Richmond, Virginia 2010 Acrylic, Raw Canvas 24"x36"

Historical Perspective

View from Great Shiplock on the Kanawha Canal, Richmond, VA Acrylic, Raw Canvas 2010 30"x40"

Uncertain History

Tobacco Row, Shockoe Bottom, Warehouses Erased Painted while in residence at the Contemporary Artist Center Woodside in Troy, NY. Acrylic on Canvas 2014 16"x22"

Blue Ridge to Green Mountain

Accumulated images from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Richmond, points north on I-95, Troy, NY and Brattleboro, VT. Photocollage 2014 11"x14"

Pallisades to Manhattan

Rockefeller Overlook, Palisades Parkway Painted while in residence at the Art Students League of New York, Vytlacil, Sparkill, NY. Acrylic on Linen 2015 32"x36"

Terrain Erased

Amalgam of images from Richmond, Virginia, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and back alleys of Troy, NY. Painted while in residence at the Contemporary Artist Center Woodside in Troy, NY. February 2014 Ink, Pastel and Acrylic on Jute 2014 32"x32"

Prince Edward Nottoway Border

Border Prince Edward Country, Nottoway County, Virginia Painted while in residence at the Art Students League of New York, Vytlacil, Sparkill, NY. Monoprint Oil on Paper 2015 18"x24"

Cloudy Afternoon Piermont Marsh

Piermont Marsh, Piermont, NY Painted while in residence at the Art Students League of New York, Vytlacil, Sparkill, NY. Monoprint Oil on Paper 2015 14"x18"