Having been asked to provide an artist’s statement for an Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation exhibition several years ago reminded me of Tom Wolfe’s clever remarks in his book The Painted Word. He said it was a Eureka moment when he understood that before you could understand the art of the abstract expressionists you first had to read about it.

Hopefully that is not the case with my work on this site. It is tempting to add all sorts of verbiage that the work itself does not support or live up to. That said I think artists and all of those who teach “art” are interested in helping others to “see”. I invite you to see this work with your eyes, your mind, your heart, and your soul.

I think the artist’s job is not to present you with an exact representation of a “thing” but rather to reveal the essence of the “thing”; that part that evokes an emotional response, perhaps a spiritual response. I am awed by beauty, that mysterious engagement that is powerful, sometimes sublime, sometimes terrifying as with the approach of a violent storm, but beautiful and haunting at the same time.

To the “religious” viewer I invite you to look beyond your doctrines, dogmas, and creeds. In this indefinable thing we call Creation, I urge you to look for that "something" that is far greater than your verbal constructs. To the  pagan viewer I invite you to see and think what is this force or being that animates Nature? To atheist viewer I would like you to see beyond that which is visible and consider the invisible and I’m not just talking about the electromagnetic spectrum!

Finally a quote from Charles Hawthorne’s book simply entitled “Hawthorne on Painting.”

“Our job is to be an artist, which is to be a poet, a preacher if you will, to be of some use in the world by adding to the sum total of beauty in it. We like what we do. There always has been and always will be people of our kind, who like to look at nature and make representations, and others who like to look at what we do.”