Opening to the West Painting

I've almost always depicted landscapes, but within that subject I've had a series of interests. Some of my landscapes are paintings and some are wall sculptures. Some are pastoral and some are city-based, others are suburban. In the non-pastoral works I often combine nature and the human-made in ways that express their frequent conflict. Many of the landscapes, both paintings and wall sculptures, are of images glimpsed quickly while I was traveling. This is related to Einstein's theory of special relativity, dealing with objects moving through their surroundings, which has always fascinated me. Then recently a series of events has brought me to painting scenes that I have mostly not seen with my own eyes.... At about the time the Coronavirus came to America, late February 2020, I fell from a ladder and fractured my back, in a double-whammy to my life. I spent the next few months in a hospital and then a rehab/nursing home, healing and trying to avoid catching Covid-19. Eventually coming home, I was depressed. When I could pick up art again, I planned to resume my landscape sculpture of familiar places, but could not do the hard physical labor of sculpture with my broken back healing. I became interested in mountains, which I hadn’t particularly in my previous landscape works. Videos and photos of mountains suddenly inspired me and re-energized my spirit. Drawing and painting their shapes, thrusting and monumental like frozen motion, their grandeur, excited me and provided strong emotions. Without planning I gravitated toward watercolor paintings of these mountains, because the spontaneity and flow of watercolor from the brush were expressions of these feelings. I am still making these watercolors. I have named this the Unexpected Series, because it came out of nowhere. It is to me a healing process and a spiritual renewal at the same time. It gives the possibility of happiness in a time, in our nation and in my own life, of great challenge and uncertainty.