Artist's Statement -- Collaborating With Nature, July 2005
The nature that inspires me is the nature that has been altered by the human hand. How things grow as a result of either our attention or indifference is something that appears in my work in a variety of ways. The flowers in a still life may come from a hothouse or an overgrown city lot. A landscape can be found in a beautiful private garden or in two trees struggling to grow under an expressway. As an artist, I find the intersection of the inevitable drive of nature to grow, and the effects of man on it, to be a fascinating and an artistically compelling subject. It provides a stage for many stories to be told Ð hopefully several in the same painting. While I look to the visual world for my inspiration, I also employ many constructs of painting (color theory, composition, etc) to translate what I see in nature into a work of art. In the end I hope to produce artwork that both transcends and is true to the view that inspired it.
Ryerson Woods - July, 2005
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