During the summer of 2020, despite the COVID 19 pandemic and the ensuing shutdowns, Jonathan Cooper Gallery in London, UK hosted my solo show titled “Transitions.”

This is the brief description that I wrote for the show’s catalogue:

These paintings are meditations on time. They stem from the fragile space between the losses and renewals that fill each day; in the sound of falling leaves, in the smell of rain, and in the fading sky at dusk I catch glimpses of what I can and cannot keep, of what is ending and what is beginning.

Time is an important element in each of my paintings, in the inspirations behind them and also in the process of making them. My paintings often begin as 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. In an age of convenience, speed, and noise, my paintings are quiet, slow, and made by hand with materials that have, for the most part, been used for centuries. These studio paintings take shape over the course of many weeks or months, gradually emerging through layers of opaque texture and transparent glazes. 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.

“Cathedral Forest,” 40x60 inches, oil on linen panel