Upon the Heath Painting

George Innes, the 19th century American Tonalist painter, said "...an elaborateness of detail does not gain me meaning." Turner is inspiring. "Indistinctness is my forte." Turner's work glows with light and everything is infused with motion. His landscapes are never static. My work emulates his. Landscapes are fluid; skies threaten, clouds move, grain sways, trees rustle, and the sea restlessly heaves. A city scape is frenetic with abstract traffic. The canvas is attacked with knife and brush and enthusiasm. I like my paintings to exude moods and motion and I sometimes have creative periods that tend exclusively to the knife. Color is used not to describe but to evoke emotion. Intentions are conveyed through suggestions - not delineation. Verena Rotke wrote “Nature itself, the landscape itself, does not contain any straight line, any artificial composition – its beauty can exclusively be seen in apparent disarrangement.” I now live in San Diego county next to the sea. My roots are in the prairies of Alberta and the mountains of the Canadian Rockies. I paint what I know - whether it is a vista before me or a memory entrenched in my mind. My recent series of portraits entitled "Recollection" represents those of us nearing the end of our lives and pondering what has come before. One reviewer wrote: "Beautiful depth, perspective and feeling emits from these works of art. The artist actually takes you into the painting so that you can feel the work. I will look forward to keeping an eye on future works!" - Laurie Ruffner, Executive Director at Bitterroot Performing Arts Council Another said: "Your works are metaphysical. There is a mystery of life in them, of becoming and existence, and affirming the existence of God, all accoutered in a special atmosphere..." -Roland Kay. I have intensely studied the work of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud and the one "following closely on his heels" - the Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan. As one grows older one realizes the past is close behind (as he says in Tangled up in Blue). And my landscapes and seascapes have become art of the moment, just as Dylan's lyricism and Rimbaud's symbolist poems are of the moment. Aristotle asked the question “How wide is the present?” I am able to conjure up a vision from my memory that appears to me instantly - it is just as close as the moment behind. "We bleed the present moment into a future that never comes and then we recast the future as a past that cannot be recaptured.