Landscapes

My works are typically small oil sketches painted on location. They are painted quickly, directly, using a wide variety of strokes giving the final piece a highly textured finish. These paintings are then varnished and framed in quality arts & crafts frames.

Painting a sketch en plein air, that is, in the open air, is popularly believed to have begun with the nineteenth-century French Barbizon and later French Impressionists, but sketching from nature in fact has a far deeper history and is a practice that is still going strong today. “Everything that is painted directly on the spot has a strength, a power, a vividness of touch that one doesn't find again in the studio." - Robyn G. Peterson | Executive Director, Yellowstone Art Museum, 2006-2017

I'm inspired by the Dutch masters Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rein Portvliet, American painters like Edgar Payne, Maynard Dixon, Edward Hopper, and Richard Schmid, and of course the Canadian Group of Seven including Tom Thompson and Emily Carr.

Living painters that I admire for their brushwork, values and draftmanship include Jeremy Lipking, Daniel Keys, Matt Smith, Clyde Aspevig, George Strickland, T. Allen Lawson, Simon Addyman, Michael Workman, Derek Penix, and Carolyn Anderson.

Painters and designers I admire for their strong sense of design include Eric Bowman, Logan Maxwell Hagege, Tim Horn, Michael Schwab, Ed Mell and more recently Brett Allen Johnson.