I'm constantly thinking about painting within the context of the seen world, hunting for images and scouting out new neighborhoods and undiscovered locales that might give me the right combination of intriguing compositional elements and light qualities. Some of the best possibilities are found not far from my home or studio.

These vignettes that I habitually overlook while I am busily occupied in my daily groove, are finally discovered when I slow down enough to look. Other times it's necessary to get at least a thousand miles away, out of my rut, to another geographic area with a completely different landscape and light in order to shock my senses into seeing differently. Simply put, at times I have to make myself see life like a tourist or a child, in order to adequately call attention to the wondrous.

It is the challenge of open-air, or plein-air painting, to capture that evasive atmospheric effect, and the process is as rewarding and as valuable as the end result; an active meditation and vehicle for heightened perception that connects and keeps me grounded in the moment. If I'm stuck in my head, or any where else but here, the end result will reveal my inattention.

In addition to this, I love the way light hits the side of a building, and the places where the man-made meets nature. Lately I've been drawn to the empty space between things, the cool passive shadow areas, the resting places between areas of bright activity. When the finished product is successful, I have a painted gem, a memento documenting a fleeting luminous moment, a recorded history made from marks on a surface.

"Right now a moment in time is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become a sensitive recording plate...give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time."
-Paul Cezanne