Random, organic, orderly, beautiful, and organized: Biology is the master order that underlies the structure of our world and lives. Its patterns are random, spontaneous and irregular but also systematic and repetitive. An array of cells dividing becomes the components of the living person, which becomes the society and its circles, which makes up the culture and its spheres. A nebula viewed through a telescope resembles the cell dividing. The view under a microscope resembles a landscape; the landscape’s components look like organelles.
I find the underlying matrix of life on earth to be fascinating. In college I studied biology, then I spent a lot of years painting the land and sky. These paintings are a continuation of that exploration with the lens moved much further in or out. This work, regardless of its level of abstraction, inspires an instinctive reaction because it is drawn from the familiar vocabulary of nature. What element or scene is portrayed is irrelevant; you know the patterns of waves, you recognize a soft horizontal as a horizon, you are familiar with the physics of the spread of water, you know the marks of time and erosion, wind and flow. I often juxtapose or combine elements like water and sky, or biomass and waves, which results in an interesting ambiguity. Whether I paint the whole or a part, something recognizable or something abstracted, the pieces feel familiar to most people who are residents of the same planet, and lovingly familiar to me.