Autumn Tree with Birds

Oil on linen panel

40 x 30 inches

Private Collection

This painting was be part of my solo show, “Transitions,” with Jonathan Cooper Gallery in London, UK. The show was a meditation on time, both in subject matter and in the process required to make each painting. My ideas often begin with small plein air sketches, completed quickly out in nature as I try to capture the essence of a place before the light shifts or the weather changes. When I work in my studio I gather ideas from these sketches, combining them and overlaying them with imagination and memory in a much more deliberate and time-consuming process. It is a balance between the deliberate and the spontaneous that points me back to that tension between the fleeting and the longing for permanence. Making these paintings is an act of contemplation for me, and hopefully an invitation for viewers to share in that experience as well.