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May 25, 2021
Media: Oil on gallery wrapped canvas
Size: 8x8 in
While light and color are big parts of what I seek when I paint, I’ve always felt closer to the expressionist crowd than the impressionists. From my early love of Austrian painters like Oskar Kokoshka and Richard Gerstl to Van Gogh through abstract expressionists like Willem de Kooning and artists like Richard Diebenkorn and Wolf Kahn who took abstraction and turned it back to the landscape, I’ve always felt the tug of the brushstroke as an extension of my own emotion. While rooted in observation and a love of the natural world, my paintings are filtered through memories, imagination, and my varying moods while painting. Reconciling my desire to maintain some ties to a specific sense of place while also having a universality with personal expression has been my quest as a painter.
This little 8” x 8” oil painting titled “Red Marsh” was inspired by sunsets at the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center in Port Aransas. I’m always drawn to the shallow water of marshes and how the reflected color extends the sky. I was pushing how far I could simplify these beautiful marshes both in color and form to portray the intensity of a dying day. While light and color are big parts of what I seek when I paint, I’ve always felt closer to the expressionist crowd than the impressionists. From my early love of Austrian painters like Oskar Kokoshka and Richard Gerstl to Van Gogh through abstract expressionists like Willem de Kooning and artists like Richard Diebenkorn and Wolf Kahn who took abstraction and turned it back to the landscape, I’ve always felt the tug of the brushstroke as an extension of my own emotion. While rooted in observation and a love of the natural world, my paintings are filtered through memories, imagination, and my varying moods while painting. Reconciling my desire to maintain some ties to a specific sense of place while also having a universality with personal expression has been my quest as a painter.
This little 8” x 8” oil painting titled “Red Marsh” was inspired by sunsets at the Leonabelle Turnbull Birding Center in Port Aransas. I’m always drawn to the shallow water of marshes and how the reflected color extends the sky. I was pushing how far I could simplify these beautiful marshes both in color and form to portray the intensity of a dying day. |
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