I have always liked being outdoors in nature best of all, so when I became a painter it was only natural that I drifted outdoors to paint in the open air, under the full light of the sky, observing the natural world. Paintings for me are a record of immediate perception in the moment, not filtered through photographs, memory or imagination. I paint what is before me as accurately as I can without trying to correct, improve or idealize nature. I choose to limit myself in this way from the idea that nature as it exists has an authority I want to respect. I want to feel the beauty of what is. For the viewer, as well as myself, I want to evoke a deep sense of the numinous presence of the living world in an actual and specific place in time. My practice flows from a deep attachment to the particular: not the general idea of a tree but the reality of this particular tree or group of trees, living beings with a history often older than my own, growing in this place within this community of plants and conditions, and shaped by the accidents of time and weather over decades of growth and decay.
A quick sketch might be done in a single session. A larger, elaborate piece might extend over days, weeks, months, sometimes years. These painting sessions are mindfulness meditations, always coming back to what is happening now.