Gallery of Paintings
Painting a Landscape
Rarely do we experience a scene as a single view. It affects us on many levels. The light changes and the perspective moves as we walk. The three dimensional environment is filtered through our own emotions. All these create our impression of a place. The duty and joy of an artist is to transform these sensations into one image. Like a composer harmonizes sounds, the painter modulates color. As a choreographer balance movement, the artist shapes composition. And like a playwright strives for drama, the painter reveals the power of light.
Poetic Landscape
The traditional horizontal landscape format has recently become a limitation to my thinking. I have painted now about a dozen 24” x 36” vertical panels and used a wooden “matt” frame with thin wood edges that somewhat resembles a Chinese scroll. Composition has been simplified. Top and bottom areas are soft and minimal. My goal is to combine American luminism and oriental aesthetics in a vertical presentation. To me, they are poetic landscapes, quiet and more contemplative than my past work.
Triptych
Recently, my exploration in format and composition resulted in producing two 36” x 72” triptychs made up of three 24” x 36” panels with thin wood frames. The first is a Japanese Zen garden in summertime with rock groups, moss and racked sand and gravel. Painting gravel lines was quite a challenge but the end result reflects the feeling of tranquility from the orderly patterns. The other one is a classic Japanese garden in the snow as dawn breaks across a small pond. It was another challenging but rewarding experience to paint with a goal to create a feeling of peace and serenity. In the future, I hope to complete a series of four triptychs by adding one garden in spring and one in autumn, with one of them being a Chinese garden.
