Statement
I am both a painter and a sculptor. These disciplines offer me two very different means of expression yet share a common subject, my passion for light. My sundials are abstract sculptures that measure the apparent motion of the sun throughout the day, the seasons and even the year. These mostly large, public works are carefully laid out, accurate both mathematically and geometrically, cast or fabricated in bronze, steel or stone and permanently set for their exact location. They are about sunlight and shadow. By contrast, my representational landscape paintings are in watercolor, an easily transportable medium that is direct and spontaneous where chance and accident are welcome. I generally choose sculpturally interesting subjects with strong, often unexpected, compositional points of view. The paintings attempt to capture a time of day and the quality of light of local landscapes. Reflective and transparent light on a stream or lily pond or modulated light fracturing on a quarry rockface, even the light in a wheelbarrow are often the subject of these paintings. In addition, the use of color in free and expressive brushwork offers an added emotional dimension. I feel that the freedom and energy of expression that I enjoy in my watercolor paintings are a happy and very necessary balance to the formal and exacting discipline that I use in my sundial sculptures. In each instance, both are in the service of the beauty of sunlight.
