After early years spent exploring surrealism and expressionism, my art for the past four decades has focused on traditional, though not ‘academic’, realism. I mostly work from the figure and landscape in drawing and watercolor.
The majority of my landscapes are from the French Jura Mountains near the French/Swiss border, where the countryside seems little changed since the 19th century. Of particular interest to me is the way the enormous farmhouses (half-house/half-barn) are built into the terrain, almost as solid and permanent as the rocks that surround them. I am equally fascinated by the ever-shifting terrain — expansive pastures that end abruptly in almost vertical mountainsides, or drop off suddenly into deep ravines; where fields of wildflowers interdigitate with forests and meandering villages; all of which contributes to an endless array of challenging compositions.
To be as present to place as possible, I work almost exclusively en plein air: drawing and painting outdoors on site. Further, in striving to capture the qualities that inspire me, I take few liberties with my subjects. In this, making art is less a matter of replicating what I see and more an attempt to connect with it.
