Current News and Events (in no particular order)
• AuSable Artisan Village "Annual International Great Northern Art Explosion”, 8/22-9/7/2025 (Grayling, MI)
• Blue Line Arts, "Life in Ink" 8/16 - 9/27/2025 (Roseville, CA)
• Swope Art Museum, in colaboration with Indiana State University Yang Family Art Gallery, "81st Wabash Valley Exhibition" August 19 – October 31 (Terre Haute, IN)
• Cleveland Botanical Gardens/Holden Forests & Garden, Solo Show: "Trails of Immersion" Aug 29 (artists reception) - Oct. 31st 2025 (Cleveland, OH)
• Honorable Mention. TERAVARNA "12th LANDSCAPE" 2025 International Juried Art Competition
...Upcoming...
• Springfield Museum of Art, "48th Annual Watercolor Ohio 2025", 9/20 through 11/16, 2025 (Springfield, OH) • notified that I received the Silver Medal
• Finalist. AcrylicWorks 12: The Best of Acrylic, Artists Magazine, on news stands in September.
• Live Paint & Exhibition, The Arts Commission "Artomatic 419", September 19-21, 2025 (Erie Street Market, 201 S Erie St, Toledo, OH 43604)
“Landscapes” Artist’s Series Statement:
My love of landscape originally developed from the discipline of plein air painting. This discipline was interrupted by Covid lock-downs but became for me a passionate 'escape' because, for me, the immersion ‘in’ the landscape is transportive. These days I find myself taking excursions for hiking/reference trips and although I'm working on pieces in the studio, when I hear my viewers say “oh, I want to be there”, I know that I’ve tapped into their need for escape and immersion as well.
I paint lush landscapes whether 'in the wild' or structured gardens utilizing two separate veins of medium and substrate, either by watercolor on YUPO or acrylic paints on canvas or panel.
I am attracted to the color and luminous nature that the synthetic paper (YUPO) affords. It also enables me to explore textures, enjoy vibrant color that sets upon the surface in an evaporative fashion, and achieve the ‘lush’ escape I’m going for. Concurrently, the use of acrylics with palette knives, ink, utilizing a silicone implement to dot paint and even a technique of whipping paint upon the surface with a string pushes me further into an impressionistic expression with the added excitement of thick texture. I purposefully shy away from using a brush with my acrylic paintings as a necessary crutch for the impressionism I love.
Within these 2 vastly different methods and mediums for producing landscapes, I am drawn not only to the beauty within a scene, but am careful to include beckoning elements of light/shadow, repetition and depth. Scenes chosen revolve around a dance of light and shadow and it's own sense of invitation to explore; pathways are common to include for this reason. Quiet, hidden, reflective/introspective....lush; these are things I look for. I am polarized by scenes that make me forget my troubles and I feel "enveloped", even if just for a moment.
“Genre/Portraiture” Series Artist Statement:
I had been painting landscapes as a way to escape my troubles; and throughout covid, I began to experiment with media, mediums and techniques that I'd never tried before; such as watercolor on Yupo, a synthetic plastic-like paper. I also spent a lot of time with close family (during covid lock-downs) and so my love for genre themes, including portraits, continued to grow and become very personal. This personal nature involves my affections, feelings, and light-hearted approach as my real midwest reality wears upon my sleeve. I consider myself a 'deep thinker', but I'm always looking for humor and hope in life.
Although Yupo is known for it's ease in subtractive painting, I paint in a layered add-on approach... very seldomly 'erasing' what I've laid down. This approach is more painstaking in having to only lay one pass down at a time followed by the time it takes to fully dry in-between passes (because we are talking about evaporation on plastic).. but this method gives me a distinctive look and feel that is uncommon for most purveyors of Yupo. I also find myself using watercolor pencils and ink as well.