“Rocky Flows” (WA) 36″ x 48″, 2010. Private collection Texas
In 2010 I returned to Washington state to paint. This time, however, instead of focusing the woods I wanted to paint the water because I had been so surprisingly intrigued by my first attempts at it the summer before. I had been trying to capture the changing light over the course of the day on dense woods (and trying to do so on a large scale) for a while and had actually been avoiding painting water…at least in Florida where the water is often stagnate & opaque and therefore, functions too much like a resting point in my paintings which is something I do not want in my highly active “over-all” compositions. In Washington state, however, there are clear, moving waters that have rapids, rocks and logs in them so it turned out these waters were even more complicated and had even more moving & changing color/parts than the woods. This meant I had to try to capture not just the surface of the water, but also the movement of that surface. On top of that, I had to capture the changing reflections of the sky and clouds as well as what I could see below the surface of the water as it ebbed and flowed down stream.
“Teal Fluidity: Morning” (WA) 15″ x 30″, 2009. Private collection Dallas
Talk about the complex nature of trying to capture first-hand the multidimensional and ever-changing experience of being in a specific location…painting water was it! I was mesmerized and hooked…I rented a cabin with a small, make-shift shed-studio were I was able to spend almost a month painting by the banks of the Skykomish River.
“Big Bock Bank” (WA) 36″ x 48″, 2009. Private collection Texas
