Artist Statement For the last fifteen years I have been involved in video and film. In 1997 I had a chance to document a northern Californian artist, Gregory Kondos while he worked in the field doing pastel sketches along the Big Sur Coast. This man was having serious fun. As an avid hiker and former geologist, I loved the idea of pausing long enough to sketch the landscape, instead of just rushing up and down the mountain. Of course now you can't get me off the mountain or to put it in valley terms, I'm often oil painting till the crows fly home.   Open air painting is my first love, but usually I put the finishing touches on pieces back in the studio. I am drawn to unique high angle and low angle perspectives, strong contrast in lighting, and compressed telescopic viewpoints. The landscapes that I choose to paint are tied by a common thread, a sense of nostalgia, a setting that at once is current but also captures a sense of the valley that hasn't changed for many years. I believe that landscapes live in us, they are part of our homeland security and I am constantly surprised by how beautiful the ordinary is in this broad and flat terrain. My inspirations and recent self taught education start with the French Impressionists and American Painters Inness, Sargent, and Hopper, as well as our own Thiebaud and Kondos. And I bow to the earth, to this confluence of alluvial fans that we live on. In what seems like a previous lifetime, the late 70's and early 80's, I worked as an exploration geologist while dabbling seriously in both ceramics and dance. I directed and choreographed for the high-flying-short lived Fly-By Night Dance Troupe.