I am fascinated by common dissociative states like daydreaming and absent-mindedness where there can be a momentary transporting of oneself to someplace completely different. I will always have a special place in my heart for very absent-minded people. They can travel without going anywhere and benefit from the escape of dreaming while still being awake. I have definitely in my lifetime done my share of floating out the window. I don’t experience this as a result of boredom, but rather, as the constant urge to explore. I long to explore the natural world that constantly beckons to me and, to explore my inner world which calls to me in a way that is, perhaps, even more compelling. These brief departures are an experience in which time itself can become somewhat fragmented.

The world in these paintings is chopped up, spinning and tilting in a grid superimposed over the landscape, forcing its way over the snow, fields, trees and sky. Splicing together different points of view in this manner is my reconciliation of fragmented time. In my work there also must be a point of view existing inside the image, interacting with the environment. These are the imaginary sentient beings who float through my imagery. I want them to appear to have feelings of their own: hopeful, curious, lost, yearning. The landscape, then, simply becomes the stage where these invented forms act out small vignettes of humanity – tiny events that only exist for a moment and then are gone. A brief arrival, a quick meeting in the sky over the field, an instant departure.

They are my people, developed by a process of spontaneous scribbling, alternated with layers of thick landscape imagery. They are not conceived ahead of time in any way or rehearsed with drawings and sketches. They arrive in the painting by an intuitive process of elimination; the encroaching landscape slowly cropping and defining their contour until their shape and position is completely realized.

I have come to rely on hearing the fun and varied interpretations other people bring to my imagery. Being included in how someone else experiences my work transforms the solitary practice of painting into an act of communication. Sharing with others sustains my happiness and sense of connection to the “real” world while I remain immersed in this brooding and preposterous world of my own, where I dwell in the threshold between what is possible and impossible, between the natural and supernatural worlds.