For a moment, imagine that you are located on top of a high place…the peak of a hill or mountain, the roof of a building or the edge of a cliff. The immensity of the view before you conjures a particular state of mind. Fleeting notions of the responsibilities of everyday life are gently replaced with experiencing weather, the wind as a presence, and the broad expanse of the horizon. Slowly your thoughts drift....your thoughts drift between the quality of light that is unique to a certain time of the day and the associations, images and memories that your mind projects. In contrast, think how different your thoughts would be if you were alone in a boat at sea without any sight of land. As you experience the encompassing natural elements, your prevailing concern may be survival with a sense of purpose or destination.

A common thread that runs between these two experiences could be that an intimate relationship between an individual and their surrounding environment is being formed. When one views a painting, a visual experience can occur that is both private and interactive with the fictive space of the picture plane. Unlike an involvement with one’s external world, the process of seeing and contemplating a painting forms an interpretive screen between artist and viewer. The images, and pictorial interactions conjured by the artist are slowly revealed to the viewer and then reinterpreted through the process of discovery and reflection.

The reference to weather in my paintings allows me a great deal of freedom in constructing pictorial space. It enables me to transfigure aspects from experience or personal interests into the visceral substance of paint. References such as temperature, time of day or storm conditions, help form the initial composition and build subtle nuances in all stages of the painting’s development. The composition or structure of the painting begins in an exploratory manner until a set of visual questions begins to emerge. These visual questions can create a shift from a depiction to an abstracted state…from a known to an unknown condition.

A dialogue is formed between the act of painting and responses that are evoked during the painting process. This fluid and dynamic way of working enables the possibilities of the painting to go beyond either representation or the physical fact of the paint.

For the viewer, what initially appears to be a cloud formation, a body of water or some type of land mass may become more uncertain over time and may conjure other associations. Upon closer observation, what appears as a nameable space or object may dissipate into the literal fact of the paint or may reveal another interpretation. As one begins the process of switching from seeing the painting as a whole and focusing on individual areas of the painting, a drift into a free flowing stream of consciousness may occur. These interpretations or perspectives are more of a drift in which one is enters into a meditative state or encounters situations and images from the subconscious.

The act of painting is my attempt to form a bridge to the imagination…a bridge where paradoxical situations can become fluid and meaning can take place in the movement between ideas. It is this undertaking that enables the painting process to transform the pictorial elements of painting language and subject matter beyond a summation of visual facts into the light of expression. An attempt to create a fictive space through the act of painting where interpre-tations can lead one to strange perspectives and to enigmatic spaces to explore. This approach allows seemingly contradictory perspectives to coexist and new avenues of relational thinking to become actualities.