Home Lands

A landscape of the Blucher Valley watershed in Sonoma County, featuring a Japanese red pine with a stand of birch trees. I took in this view for months, watching the leaves change from green to gold. I was nourished by this sight, and in turn created this painting celebrating the pastoral lands of Sonoma County, California.

Giclées are printed on Cold Press Bright White paper; 310g, water-resistant, and made from 100% cotton fiber, acid and lignin free.

This is a special place, close to my heart. When I go there I feel the power of nature, the connectedness of all of life. The cliffs are very tall, rising straight up from the beach. There is a wildness to the place, an untouched quality. After one of my visits to this beach I drove to a lookout spot above it. There I found an old piano placed on the edge of the cliffs. I sat down and played for a few minutes in that most unlikely situation. It was humorous and delightful to hear the sounds of the old piano floating out over the cliffs above the ocean.

Giclées are printed on Cold Press Bright White paper; 310g, water-resistant, and made from 100% cotton fiber, acid and lignin free.

One winter we took the train from California to Chicago, and headed back west in a car. We decided to take a scenic route through the Rocky Mountains, making our way at a leisurely pace on smaller two-lane roads. It was snowing, the snowflakes that fell piled up on the already laden mountains and trees. There was no one else out on the road, the conditions being what they were. It was quiet, the sound dampened down by the fresh fallen snow. The aspen trees stood out in bold lines of white with black linear accents. There many stands of them, swaths of living sculpture that stood out against the white snow drifted hills. It was spectacular. As the day move to night we were spectators to a sunset of bright pink and yellow, with tinges of blue. The light danced off the surface of the snow, adding to the grandeur of the scene.
With these images in mind I painted “Aspens”. I wanted to convey the beauty and the stillness that I had seen and felt in this winter drive.

Aspens is painted on sheer silk and floated off the back of the frame. The frame is constructed of spalted maple and blue mahoe with sterling silver hardware. Decorative paper backs the painting.

Giclées are printed on Cold Press Bright White paper; 310g, water-resistant, and made from 100% cotton fiber, acid and lignin free.

Watercolor painting on silk of wintery mountains in a light mist.

"On the Mountain Pass" is painted on sheer silk and floated off the back of the frame. The frame is made of coco bolo and ebony with sterling silver hardware. Decorative paper backs the painting.

Giclées are printed on Cold Press Bright White paper; 310g, water-resistant, and made from 100% cotton fiber, acid and lignin free.

I wanted to give you the feeling of what it is like to be walking through a dense tropical forest in the evening. You are walking along a path towards the surf and it is quite dark, there are trees and dense vegetation, you hear crickets and an occasional bird call. You walk through an opening in the trees, and suddenly, there is the setting sun. The sky, clouds, and surface of the ocean are brilliant with light and color.

"Coral Sea, Coral Sky" is painted on sheer silk and floated off the back of the frame. The frame is made of coco bolo and ebony with sterling silver hardware. Decorative paper backs the painting.

Giclées are printed on Cold Press Bright White paper; 310g, water-resistant, and made from 100% cotton fiber, acid and lignin free.

I was hiking the Mount St Helena trail in Robert Louis Stevenson State Park in Sonoma County. It was a late September afternoon, and I came upon a Manzanita that seemed to be glistening in the light of the low-hanging sun. In order to represent the moment I felt it necessary to accentuate the sky with multi-colored metal leaf. I chose to paint the Manzanita branch without sunlit highlights so as the keep the colors vibrant against the yellow background.

"Mayacamas Autumn" is framed in a gold wooden frame. A textured hand-made paper surrounds the painting.

Giclées are printed on Cold Press Bright White paper; 310g, water-resistant, and made from 100% cotton fiber, acid and lignin free.

I dreamed that I was flying up a river with rocky green cliffs rising up on either side. I was flying close to the water, about halfway up the cliff walls. The river was a lively green-blue water that rushed with a burbling, jumping, splashing sound. I felt absolutely natural in flight, I was zooming around the bends in the river canyon with ease. The feeling was one of freedom and exhilaration. I had the sense that this was the Wailua river in Kauai, Hawaii. I was seeing it in a way that I had never seen it before, as a bird, rather than a pedestrian. I woke up from this dream in the middle of the night. I immediately sketched the scene of the dream before I forgot it. In the morning I began to paint the dream. The feeling of the river flight was fresh, and the painting flowed easily. Dreams have always been important to me, for inspiration and discovery. Flying dreams most of all.

Giclées are printed on Cold Press Bright White paper; 310g, water-resistant, and made from 100% cotton fiber, acid and lignin free.

I am very much into the art form of haiku. I have been reading it for many years. Often, I pull out a book of haiku and read the poems, letting those few words create images in my mind. One of my favorite poets is Issa, whose name means “cup of tea”. He spent many years traveling Japan, composing poems as he went, in this way he became famous as a haiku poet. When I was painting this I thought of Issa and his spontaneous haiku as he viewed each vista and temple along his journey.

On a roadtrip throughout the Northwest we stopped in Portland for a few days. The Japanese gardens there are a must-see. This is an image taken from a photograph of a tree standing next to a pond. It is a very beautiful and serene place.

Sunsets in Fiji are spectacular. On the island of Naitauba there is a beach below the village that has a nightly show of every type of sunset. I sat on this beach many times, eating my dinner, and watching the sunset. It never failed to awe me. In this painting I wanted to convey the vivid colors as they actually appear there. I painted this on silk, which does not absorb color as easily as paper. It required many layers of watercolor to get the depth and intensity of color that I wanted.

Giclées are printed on Cold Press Bright White paper; 310g, water-resistant, and made from 100% cotton fiber, acid and lignin free.

Series of three paintinigs of manzanita.

Bamboo in snow.

I had this idea of doing a painting where the viewer is high in the sky looking down towards islands and the ocean. The viewer is the crane in flight. When I watch birds flying I often wonder what the world looks like to them as they traverse the sky. I highly stylized the clouds and sun, drawing inspiration from traditional Japanese art, the simplicity of line and emphasis on composition.