“Landscape Nocturnes”

Full Moon

8" x 10" Oil on canvas, framed $895

Although I am primarily a classical portrait painter, I often make time to focus on landscapes. 

I find my inspiration in the poetry of nature’s drowsy hum lost in dreams. The mood is often hushed: moisture-laden air, clouds before the rain, the clearing after the storm, mists, vapors, fogs, smoke and hazes.

The mysterious colors of dawn, dusk, twilight and moonlight challenge me to work within the narrow range of color that the mysterious and moody scene allows. To these themes, I apply the musical term “nocturnes.”

I avoid the literal in copying nature but suggest the broad simplification with a darkened palette rich in sensuous appeal. 

Sometimes to capture the mood, I use scrubby brushwork, particularly in the skies, where the strokes are applied so quickly that the color of the underlying painting shows through. Oftentimes thick juicy brush loads of light illuminate spots on a canvas. 

My goal is to find the spiritual in landscape: to create order out of chaos and to blend the “real” with the “unreal.”