I communicate my ideas through painting and printmaking, and the subjects I primarily use are landscape and the figure. In working with landscape, I am always aware of the beauty and essence of the place, and I want to convey the mysterious or spiritual elements of that place. I try to allude to something be-yond the physical world we perceive; something we are a part of, but difficult to define or understand.
In my paintings, I attempt to communicate this through a technique I developed which heavily emphasizes texture. I use modeling paste and other materials on canvas, and then apply an underpainting of a deep violet color over the textured sur-face. The painting is finished in oils using brush and palette knife. To help me obtain the result I want, I use the effects of light and shadow, dark and light contrast, blurry and sharp focus contrast, and the manipulation of clouds, water, trees, etc., in the pictorial composition.
My linocuts are more expressionistic; they are original, hand-pulled prints, usually made in small editions. The color prints are made with only one or two linoleum blocks which are cut away and printed using the reduction method, and some of the colors may be printed using a stencil technique. In recent years, I've also been creating linocut monoprints. These works are printed in a series which are all derived from the same imagery and linoleum block, but are each printed with different colors, color-blendings, cut-out areas, and texturing tech-niques, making each one a unique print. My linocuts are made with oil-base inks on Rives lightweight paper, and are printed by hand using a wooden spoon.
