Holmes Harbor, Whidbey Island, WA
13 February, 2021, 5:20 pm

“Snow scenes are my favorite things to paint, I have been painting them for over three decades. It is such a rare and thrilling event (especially here on Whidbey) to be outside painting as the snow is actually falling. This is one of my favorite paintings that I have ever made. It perfectly encapsulates my core philosophy of what a painting is for me—an aesthetic record of a moment in time and place that hovers as a veil of color between realism and abstraction—a visual poem of my experiences in nature.

For me, the ultimate snow scene is created during a snow storm, the snow mixing with my oil paints as I work. In this way the painting is an artifact of the weather—imprinted with the fingerprints of snow. As I worked on this piece, the snow encrusted the painting and my palette as I painted. Close inspection reveals a rich paint surface, covered with the imprints of snow flakes, the granular texture caused by the snow mixing with the oil paints, and the craters left as the snow melts and evaporates out of the paint film. There are also inclusions of fir needles and other material that accumulated as I painted. I love taking detail photographs of my paintings, as this is how I look at my work. Each detail is like a small Abstract Expressionist painting, and when viewed together they conjure an image of that moment in nature.”

30”h x 30”w x 1.5”d - unframed black edge gallery wrap presentation

Click image to enlarge.

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