Large Botanicals
Nature offers an infinite number of inspirational forms, shapes, lines, colors and textures as well as an inexhaustible supply of beauty. In my Botanicals series, I work from life and research. I focus on a few important elements, the essence of a selected plant. I do no preliminary sketches. I draw the image directly onto a dark textured canvas. I use wet and dry brush techniques and solid color fields to draw attention to the textured, flat plane of the canvas.
I strive to create paintings with an emphasis on unique compositions and shapes, dynamic visual relationships in color and line, and redefinition of the two-dimensional picture plane. Creating these botanical paintings offers me the opportunity to connect with the environment. The results of my work are not a realistic botanical rendering but an artistic journey in nature and self.
"In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new. They see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves. Novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only, making a subject better from its intrinsic nature." - Henri de Toulouse Lautrec