I moved to Texas from Colorado when I was a college art student and found the scenery to be unspectacular. Where were the mountains? As flat views were uninspiring, I looked elsewhere for subject matter, settling on still life and architecture, and also narrowed my choice of materials to watercolor.
Eventually I began to find beauty in the local landscape by learning to look a little closer. Instead of yearning for mountaintop panoramas, I focused on the frequently overlooked details around me and began to paint them. An appreciation of organic shapes and patterns in nature led to study of layers of intersecting grasses and plant forms in a pasture; or the various shapes leaves take on when seen from different angles; or the effect of the late afternoon sun backlighting a landscape of native plants.
As a child I ran and played outside, building forts, spying on neighbors from the branches of a maple tree, and guiding my leaf boats down a tiny river in a roadside ditch. Returning to the woods and fields for inspiration feels like home.
