"The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it, tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body, gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration of the whole system."
Frederick Law Olmstead, landscape architect and creator of Central Park

 

I am a landscape painter and I paint what I see. When I see something that strikes me as beautiful, that inspires a feeling of excitement through my eyes, that’s what I want to paint. Olmstead captures the ability of landscape to inspire both stimulation and tranquility. My paintings convey this experience of nature by embodying an emotional reality of rejuvenation.

Andrew Jackson Downing, the Victorian Era architect who lived in Newburgh, New York, described Beauty as the profound and thrilling satisfaction which we experience in contemplating the external works of God…a worship by the heart of a higher perfection manifested in material forms. The impulse to make art in this vision is a spiritual quest. For me, creating a painting is a combination of heart and mind. I have to fall in love with the Beauty of what I am seeing, and also need to see the emerging composition, the strategy for making a painting from this initial vision. Painting in landscape, setting up my easel and opening my box of pastels, drinking in the scene with my eyes and guiding my hands into the colors to bring out the elements which excite me the most in the scene around me, this fills me with life. Artist friends tell me that I live in my pastels and that they sing. For me, the alchemy of my art is the instilling of life in the work, which is felt by the viewer.
My paintings emerge out of a growing intimacy with the landscape. They are a celebration of the Catskill Mountains and Cape Breton Island through a series of illuminated personal experiences with the landscape.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the satisfaction we experience in Beauty’s presence is felt in the heart, mind and spirit.

back to articles