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I live on a bald ridge, behind the redwood curtain, in northwest California. It is a foothill of the Klamath Mountains. The ridgetop is a large prairie, at 3,000 feet elevation, overlooking a long stretch of the Pacific coast and the ocean beyond. Below the grassland is a band of White Oaks, bent and twisted by heavy snows and covered with lichen and moss. The deep woods below the oaks are predominately Douglas Fir.
I have been painting for ten years. I am inspired to paint by the beauty of nature. Research is essential to get ideas and create concepts for successful paintings. I hike every day on our local trails and try to get outside when the light is best or the weather dramatic. As a nature lover, it makes me happy to be intimate with every glade and hollow in my home environment. Traveling to witness the wildlife spectacles that still exist is another great source of inspiration. Scenes like the caribou migration in the arctic, penguin colonies on South Georgia Island, or the Serengeti ecosystem provide unlimited material. My paintings are scenes of places I have visited, and include birds and animals that live in those environments.
Unfortunately, those protected areas are now mostly islands surrounded by a rapidly growing sea of humanity. As our population increases, the space left for wildlife diminishes, and their (and our) future prospects are imperiled. Human impacts are now a global threat to our environmental welfare. Our corporate consumer culture is changing the climate with hardly a thought of the consequences. We need to reconsider our assumption that growth is good, and be aware that there are natural limits to population and consumption. If we continue to be so shortsighted and greedy, we cannot expect the future to turn out well.
I have been painting for ten years. I am inspired to paint by the beauty of nature. Research is essential to get ideas and create concepts for successful paintings. I hike every day on our local trails and try to get outside when the light is best or the weather dramatic. As a nature lover, it makes me happy to be intimate with every glade and hollow in my home environment. Traveling to witness the wildlife spectacles that still exist is another great source of inspiration. Scenes like the caribou migration in the arctic, penguin colonies on South Georgia Island, or the Serengeti ecosystem provide unlimited material. My paintings are scenes of places I have visited, and include birds and animals that live in those environments.
Unfortunately, those protected areas are now mostly islands surrounded by a rapidly growing sea of humanity. As our population increases, the space left for wildlife diminishes, and their (and our) future prospects are imperiled. Human impacts are now a global threat to our environmental welfare. Our corporate consumer culture is changing the climate with hardly a thought of the consequences. We need to reconsider our assumption that growth is good, and be aware that there are natural limits to population and consumption. If we continue to be so shortsighted and greedy, we cannot expect the future to turn out well.