Painting scenes from nature strengthens the artist's ability to see; to see colors and shapes as weather and light change the scenery. What happens is a mystery I never quite figure out. It's as if I enter another world when I paint and become suspended in the pieces and moments and pallette which don't appear as a whole to me until sometime later, often after I've packed up my paints and made the trip home. Self-criticism seems suspended, as well, so that I am able to be satisfied with an unfinished work, and return to finish it without judgment. This hasn't always been so but has evolved since I began to paint seriously 30 years ago.

I make a conscience attempt to be as bold and abstract as possible at the start of any work, avoiding small details and brushes. This gives me a chance to see colors and form without worrying about much else. Something tells me when I need a detail to keep myself from getting lost along the way; from losing some original or identifying point in what I'm trying to say with a particular scene or by colors or something common that has in it a whisper of the infinite. I love sand dunes for they look like heads of hair, and clouds never look the same for any length of time. If one can capture the ocean changing along the shore as the sun moves across the sky, well then, that person captures what it is to be fully alive.

Something emotional moves me to begin any painting, and it is my driving force to keep this feeling alive, as if it were a story and I don't want to lose sight of the thread or plot or beauty of the original idea.

I'm always happy later with scenes I sketch on a trip; it brings back the moment and place so perfectly just the way my parents (both painters) counseled me it would. Sometimes I use these sketches as part of later works or paint a larger version. Many of my works are 2 1/2 x 3 feet or 3 x 4 feet because I like the shape and it reminds me of a "Buddhist View" out a window--a thrill of surprise kind of sight.