I am attracted to the abstract qualities of landscape. As I view myself as a conduit between the formal and the spiritual in my work, I aspire to have my paintings reach beyond words, perhaps to transcend the landscape to a deeper place.

Until recently, most of my paintings since 1990 were based on the rural landscape within an hour drive from my home. A gently rolling former prairie, I am attracted to its melodious, abstract and subtle beauty which despite man's intervention evokes a subdued and understated energy. It is an area to which I remain connected because it is where I grew up. I worked to develop a personal response to this familiar environment, endeavoring to make something extraordinary from what is so familiar and from what some say is a banal world.

My work deals with personal and social narratives that are more oblique than obvious. The images I use are primarily recognizable, whether they be human, other animals, the surrounding environment, or our own creations. Through the use of materials, imagery, and titles of varying origins and connotations, an awkwardness is created in which elements of both comedy and tragedy exist.

My recent paintings are urban landscapes depicting industrial recycling facilities. One series of paintings depict a paper recycling facility next door to my studio. Everyday I see a stream of semi trucks pull up next to the plant, disgorging mountains of used paper and cardboard boxes. The paper is dumped in a concrete yard at the side of the building and forms a constantly shifting landscape that rises and falls, spreads and recedes as the days pass. Every so often, the paper must be sprayed with a water cannon to keep it from catching on fire.

There was a painter. He kind of lived in his own world. I think somewhere in Texas he was on an island. He considered himself a fisherman by trade. I don’t know that he lived off the fish, there must also have been money coming in from something else. And I think he thought that he was some kind of an angel.