Artist's Statement -- City Gardens, 2004

The landscape paintings in this show were all painted in Chicago, most of them in private gardens. Like most landscape painters, I was an artist who had always left the metropolis to paint from nature. I packed my easel, my bags and often my family to leave the city (or country) for weeks or months at a time. We left the noise, rhythms, asphalt and lights behind. I was influenced in the countryside by what I saw and by the slower pace. In hindsight, my landscapes had begun to move toward the edge of towns and the intersection of where nature meets the man-made. But it was a still a surprise to me when after twenty years, I was suddenly able to paint landscapes in the city. There was literally a day when I looked at a view in a local park and thought, "I should paint that", and did. So in a way, these city garden paintings are a kind of "found" landscape for me. They were always there, of course, but I had never seen them as a painter. It felt like a gift, having these urban landscapes revealed to me. The city was still all around me while I painted, but at a new distance. I was leaving it behind in a different way.

The gardeners who let me in to work were, in a way, my collaborators. The Eden each gardener created influenced my paintings beyond just the plants or the neighborhood. I felt fortunate in being given access to them. Their gardens are personal spaces - intimate landscapes not only because of their scale, but also in the way they are used. They are private reprieves from the urban-ness all around us. In painting them I feel as though I know those places, and those people, in a unique way.

This body of work is on the more figurative end of my painting range. I have long followed the fine line between figuration and abstraction. I often get so lost in the space between objects or a particular light that I lose track of concrete representation of the objects or views. But in this series, a more figurative approach made sense. It wasn't an intellectual choice, but was arrived at through the act of painting, of committing to canvas something of my experience of these particular gardens. Since my access to many of these gardens was limited, and often the first time I saw them was when I arrived to paint them, they are painted very directly. The gate opened, I saw what was hidden behind it and I began to work. I feel the paintings contain some of the surprise and joy of first discovery. I hope you the viewer will give the paintings the time they need to reveal that to you.

Thomas Masters Gallery, 2004

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