For years I have wanted to combine my paintings with words from others that have influenced my work. People of like minds who speak about the connection between God, nature and creating; people like Robert Henri, Mary Rogers, Cezanne and Winslow Homer; people like Mary Oliver, who see the beyond the ordinary, in the ordinary.
This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew
to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back
of an eider duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused.
The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was
laughing.
This afternoon a gull sailing over
our house was casually scratching
its stomach of white feathers with one
pink foot as it flew.
Oh Lord, how sing and festive is your gift to us, if we
only look, and see.—Look and See, Mary Oliver
My goal as an artist is to be a visual poet in the manner of Mary Oliver. To see “beyond the the obvious to hear the song that is all around us, every day.
In this book, “About Nature”, I focus on the connection between my work and these influences. It’s divided into season sections that repeat, forming a continual revelation. The work is largely drawn from my home state of Virginia but not limited to one area. It shows the wetlands of Belmont Bay and the lilies from the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. There is of course, much from the western Appalachian area that draws me outside every summer. And there are my bird paintings, which started as a way to simply learn what I was looking at. There is very little cultivated landscape, mostly wilderness. It is there, when I am on my own, early, that I am transformed time and time again.
