“Mystical Expressionism” is the term which best describes painting the life force in Nature with an expressionistic temperament. My approach to drawing and painting is physical - the marks muscular and tactile, and the forms constructed like carpentry. The specific use of color and light is meant to penetrate the visual perception and speak directly to the emotions.
Born with an Emersonian sense of Nature, I began to paint when measured to the height of a cinnamon fern. An innate attraction to mountains and trees led the way to Buxton School in the Berkshires. My favorite painters at that time were Rembrandt, Vermeer, Brueghel, Van Gogh and Turner, and I looked to them to teach me how to paint the landscape. A chance meeting with Willem de Kooning opened the door to the 20th century, and he became a friend and mentor for many years. While a student at The Kansas City Art Institute, a point was made to work through the de Kooning influence on canvas.
In the 1970’s architectural forms became the basis of the abstract paintings. Through architectural elements it was possible to explore all things of which paintings were made.....in other words, I needed a form on which to paint and houses were as good a form as any. De Kooning agreed, “Yeah, yeah! That’s why I paint women!”. One of the “house paintings” was chosen for exhibition by Yale architect, Vincent Scully. He explained that the energy of the building surged toward the Gods in the way that the columns did on Greek Temples. This same intuition would reveal itself in future paintings and drawings of natural forms.
1981 charcoal
54 x 102 inches
In 1984 I moved to a Hemlock forest in Killingworth, Connecticut. My architectural destiny was fullfilled by designing and constructing my own house. My focus shifted to the forest. A connection to the land was made through a physical and visual dialogue between forestry and drawing and painting. A new voice began to emerge through a language of trees, logs, moss and rocks, expressing the theosophical aspect of this landscape. An interest in kindred mystical painters, and a graduate program with the Kansas City Art Institute inspired a trip to Taos, New Mexico in 1989.
From the Mabel Dodge House in Taos it was possible to draw Sacred Mountain for a few weeks. An exciting discovery was made during a visit to the Taos Pueblo. The architects of the Pueblo had referred to Sacred Mountain as a building model. I realized that although the obvious subject matter had changed from “houses” to mountains, the content of the work was still architecture. The difference now was that the architecture was the sacred structure in the landscape of Nature itself.
In 1990 an exhibition of paintings by Thomas Cole inspired me to travel to majestic landscapes and paint about the drama of deep space. I revisited the Berkshires, and painted views of Mount Greylock and the Pownal Range. Further exploration included trips to Chimney Rock, North Carolina; Yellowstone National Park; and The Gravelly Range in Montana. Mark Stevens, author and art critic, responded to seeing this work by saying that it was “reinventing the Grand American Romantic Landscape.”
This comment stirred curiosity to see more wilderness. From a journey on a freight train in 2004 to Algoma, Canada I followed the trails of timber wolves, bear, moose and the Canadian “Group of Seven” painters. Now I am riding the aphorism, “Home is Where the Heart is”, and my heart is in painting the landscape.
