About the Artist

I’ve always been a natural explorer, and I am drawn to the outdoors. When I returned to painting after a 25-year hiatus, I brought this appreciation of the land into my work, focusing primarily on painting en plein air.

Painting outside allows me to physically explore the land while searching for a location that offers an immediate connection. I enjoy discerning color within changing light and all the natural elements one encounters while painting outside.  I develop deep personal attachments and relationships with the land I paint.  My work embodies this enthusiasm and love of place, juxtaposing my excitement through expressive use of color and  brushstrokes, with elements of solitude through calm compositions.  Lately, I have been taking to the backroads and working in the Central Knob region of Kentucky.  This area, with its hills and valleys, has inspired me to incorporate geometric patterns I find  through combining tree lines, striped plowed fields, and roaming vistas. I search for stagnant elements as well, like a fading Kentucky tobacco barn or wooden fence line, to bring interplay and tension to the composition.  Solitude and isolation also find their way into my paintings naturally, from the hours spent painting alone.

I travel often to historic locations that offer plenty of direction to explore and allow me the quietude I need to form a painting.  These places in Kentucky include the Abby of Gethsemani, Maker’s Mark Distillery, Perryville Battlefield, Camp Nelson, and Shakertown.  I’ve been fortunate  to paint on private farms steeped in their own history.  If only these locations could talk, I would stay and listen to their stories.  While I will return to these locations often to capture them in different seasons, light, and moods the natural explorer in me will keep searching for new places of discovery.