YOU TUBE VIDEO dealing with a visit to a museum and an encounter with an artists work

Several months ago I was watching an ad on tv. It showed hikers in a forest on there way to a point in the forest where it reached a lookout with a view over a valley  to a mountain beyond. As they hiked they bounded over a beautiful running stream and numerous trees bushes and and other interesting aspects of the land on there way to the view of that mountain. It occurred to me how much they failed to experience on the journey they were taking. They seemed to miss some very special things on the way to that lookout.

If I have attempted to do anything fresh as a landscape painter it is that experience of stopping to look at what can be just around us if we take the time to see it. Most of the images I have painted are from fairly mundane and innocent locations that are often overlooked but exist right around us. Some are off the side of a busy road or a creek that meanders through a small town.  For example the painting that currently opens the website was just off the side of a small road in an inconsequential location. It was one of those moments of interesting light, and melting snow on late fall morning. The visual collision between winter, fall and extreme light created a unique moment that was very fleeting.

It is a very large painting, and this was purposeful to try to create a sense of being in, and part of that place. To enhance that experience most of the time I will push the opening of the painting that is growth at the bottom as something you have step over thus helping to make the viewer feel surrounded in the land.   The amount of information included in the painting as is the case with most of my work is an attempt to involve the viewer in an exploration of that moment making it feel I hope more real.