Surreal Passages from Terlingua

2020

(West, Texas)

Oil paint and collage on canvas

Abstraction, landscape’s vastness and horizon are anchors for my work. I interpret landscape through an exploration of spatial relationships. Journey and movement have been of paramount influence in my experiencing varied landscapes. Abstraction allows me to create loose narratives from memories and suggestive figurative elements within a Romantic landscape. Abstract forms, lines and marks suggest reoccurring ideas of obstacles, barriers and opportunities. I have explored this dynamic in the fusion of landscape painting with abstraction for the past 18 years. In 2006, I began using collaged photographs in my work to introduce a varied vocabulary and space. The photographs act as another layer of mark making and are suggestive of an ambiguous narrative creating a secondary space within painting. This pairing releases representational areas within the work from their descriptive function, creating a dynamic spatial relationship with the whole.