Paintings

A sense of place, a connectedness to the land, is very important to me. I think maybe that’s part of being Southern. The Southern landscape is still one that an individual can be completely immersed in, sometimes to the point of being overwhelmed. I don’t feel like that ties me to recreating the landscape I’ve worked in literally. In fact by the time I’m finished it may look more like an entirely new, very different landscape.

My work focuses on the light, on the way that it reveals atmosphere, weather and passage of time through the play of light and shadow. These can completely transform the natural forms of the environment, creating an entirely different emotional and visual response from the viewer.

For the last several years I have been working with places that I consider deeply engaging and mysterious – rural Charleston, Edisto Island, Edisto River, Cowassee Basin, Congaree Swamp and Three Rivers Greenway in the middle of urban Columbia. These are all places that I have a personal connection to, landscapes that I feel like I engage with on a regular basis. There is a sense of fragility to these places that comes from the interplay of natural forces as well as the threatened encroachment of human “development”.

Direct experience is very much a part of my approach. When I’m working in an area, I take regular walks, repeating the same path over and over in different weather and different times of the year. I make drawings, sketches and photographs on site that become the source material for my work in the studio. In the process of walking and drawing something about the essence of the place begins to take over, something that is found in the bare bones of the lines that describe the relationship of earth, sky and water, reflection and light.