How are digital tools and experiences interrupting our experience of landscape? How are they changing the definition of contemporary painting? Those questions initiated the Distant Presence series.
My work often begins with an experience in nature – a hike through the forest, a stroll through or garden, or a trek to an alpine lake. I bring photos, sketches, and memories of that experience back into the studio. I often paint on a large scale, so physical gesture enters the work. After completing a first pass at the work on a large scale, I shoot digital photos, re-printing, re-paint, scan, manipulate.. Rinse cycle repeat through digital and the handmade processes. What begins as a large oil painting morphs into a more intimate mixed media work on paper featuring inkjet, pencil and watercolor on paper. Questions of a “real” versus “fake” touch arise, until the memory of the initial experience fades and a new experience emerges.
My work is informed by modern painting influences and the struggle to find the ideal role for digital tools in both my experience of landscape and in my painting practice. I am fascinated by the way painting has survived as a central medium in contemporary art over the past century. As new materials and processes are incorporated into painting practices, painting exhibitions continue to be a strong force.