I am aware of times in my life when I can look back and see the earliest emergence of new creative ideas taking shape. At the time, I was unaware that I was shifting to a new creative language, new forms of expression. Yet, as I look back, I can clearly see that my subconscious knew. The signs were there all along. 

Take the painting below, Crossing Time While Marking the Way. It is part of the Kaleidoscope Collection, a very colorful, complex period in my work. The Kaleidoscope period became the culmination of a lifetime devotion to color that harkened back to my university days. In open rebellion against my instructors, I became devoted to color. 

Flash forward 12 years, as a professional photographer, I passionately returned to shooting black and white. Even today I take photos of the ocean, the landscape, people, my pets, and convert them from color to black and white. I love simplifying an image to its most important elements.

While I lived in Porto, from 2022 through the summer of 2024, I was heavily influenced by the many hues and chromas of the city; building facades, billboards, street art. The Kaleidoscope paintings reflected the colors and sights I routinely saw as I made my way from my home to my studio. 

When my partner and I purchased our house in Northern Portugal, and the move to a rural, quieter location was underway, the pace and palette of my life shifted. 

The complex colors of the city gave way to the somber and monochromatic tones of a rural landscape. The colors of rural life are subtle, less vivid, and especially in winter, bleak and monochromatic. 

In Shadow of the Moon, color is mostly omitted. Monochromatic form begins to take precedence. The complexity of the painting is still present - layers, luminosity, forms abstracted and minimized. 

The beginnings of a shift in style, that can be readily perceived as you navigate from my Kaleidoscopes collection to Emerging Ideas.

As boxes were unpacked, my studio space established in my home, I found myself sourcing images everywhere. That continues every day. My phone is loaded with images that inspire different elements in my paintings; a downed tree, vines on a wall.

Driving through the countryside, I pass bleak, harvested cornfields, sandwiched between rows of bare trees, bathed in silver light, tonalities of sand, umber, charcoal and grey. 

Throughout the Minho Region, the remains of the Ramadas; granite posts, once strung with wire, that held grape vines - somehow looking like ancient megaliths standing tall or bending as if downed by the wind.

As my rhythms of life slowed and simplified to match the pace and form of rural life, my palette changed as well. Emerging Ideas crosses the rubicon from my work as a colorist to the work I do now.

This transition may not have happened had I continued my daily commute to my studio in the city. The input, pace, color, and vibrancy filled my imagination and poured through my paintbrush. 

I have returned to an essential passion; distilling an image to its most essential elements.

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