Lifeline

2021 - 2022

The challenges of these past few years and the looming challenges ahead have begun to manifest in my work. Communication is broken and the way ahead looks dark, and finding positive moments of human connection feels like seeing a beacon in a dark sea. I didn’t set out to paint these ideas so literally in my work. But they’ve shown up and insist on continuing.

The first painting in which the idea manifested was “When I Met You There Was Still Time” — when I made the large white mark as a glowing light and then the small yellow light, it suddenly struck me that the painting was a love story about these two marks.

The idea of working everything around them seized me and wouldn’t let go, and I knew then that I wanted to make a long-term body of work around the idea of showing human-like connection in the language of the landscapes I’ve been painting, which seemed an appropriate setting for these small stories about love — not romantic love, but the solid, long-term, deeply felt love of human empathy.

My work continues to be inspired by the Pacific Northwest and its forested mountains, but the work is taking on a more human aspect. We are a region of contrasts: the rural and the urban, the rancher and the tech worker. This landscape fosters and reflects contraditions.

More than one person has looked at these landscapes and said that, while they can’t explain it, what initially looks dark and moody actually fills them with hope or radiance. And that’s my goal with this work. We are all moving through a landscape that feels uncertain, sometimes dark, but there is light and hope. And that light and hope comes from our connection to one another, our love and our empathy.