Artist Statement

One of the fundamental aspects of life, both in a biological and emotional sense, is the continuous attempt to achieve an equilibrium.  One’s life represents an attempt to seek a balance, while various forces change weights, shifting the fulcrum we try to find.

It is the tension and uncertainty in this life struggle, I feel compelled to paint about.  Specifically, unease in an environment, through the dualities of the agricultural world where I work, and a wild world where I am a visitor.  As an organic farmer, my agricultural world is a construct.  Virtually every inch of soil that I work in is moved, and shaped by me.  I have complete control over what grows where, and yet all of my efforts must submit to the greater forces of weather.  The dynamic fulcrum between my ordering of a world, exerting as much control as possible, and those catastrophic forces that cannot be controlled, has a deep bearing on one’s psyche.  As much as I can, my agricultural world is ordered, measured, and mapped out by me, both physically and mentally.  It is the very definition of the word ‘geometry’, and is the main reason why I choose to construct my agricultural paintings (the world of the known) using geometry to establish proportion and composition.

Many of my paintings attempt to address emotional, moral, and environmental issues related to farming.  I think it’s important to note that the perspective I base my work on, is from that of a participant, as opposed to an observer.  (Alex Colville once wrote to me, “From a farmer who paints, rather than a painter who may or may not farm”).  Hopefully, this might inform my work with some measure of validity, at least as it relates to subject matter.

The other aspect of my life that I paint about are wild spaces that I have explored, primarily Central and South American jungles.  In every sense, this is the opposite end of the fulcrum upon which I try to balance my life on, from the agricultural world.  If my farm represents the world of the ‘known’, then the rainforest, for me, represents the world of ‘the unknown’, and moving about in such a potentially dangerous environment has its own unease and tension.  Here, I am an observer, trying to identify (and therefore, validate their existence to me) the various creatures that, unlike me, are perfectly adapted and in equilibrium with their surroundings.  In a sense, I am reliving the many creation myths of hunter-gatherer societies, by going on a journey, naming the various creatures, thereby making the unknown, the known.

Order and chaos, known and unknown, observer and participant, good and evil, grace and unrest, physical and intellectual.  All, are fulcrums upon which I try to balance my life.  Ultimately, the duality of my life as a farmer and a painter, is my personal quest for equilibrium.