"Sixteen Tons and What Do You Get" Painting

My main brush is a power sander. It allows me to approach my landscapes in the matter in which I perceive them, which is a beautiful world of construction, stasis and deterioration and yet somehow polished and smooth. My paintings are an expression – a distillation – of the impressions made on my psyche by the landscapes around me, whether it be the prairies in which I grew up, the West coast of my adult years or the short time I spent in a large Eastern metropolis. My process is evident my art; it’s not something I try to hide, use and then discard, or disguise. The techniques and tools I employ – layers of pigment, sanding, scraping back, lettering – are there, exposed in the finished work. The text I use in my pieces is often found on, or inspired by the text visible on shipping containers, grain elevators, truck, trains; sometimes I use randomly chosen numbers or letters chosen purely for what they bring to the piece graphically or compositionally.