[paintbrush scraping]
[upbeat music]
The first marks that you put on a painting
are important even if they end up being entirely hidden
under succeeding layers of paint.
[upbeat music]
I'm trying to stay ahead of my analytical brain.
[upbeat music]
I'm trying to let my hand take over
and get beyond my intellectual or thinking side
of what I'm doing.
[upbeat music]
It's a lot like taking a walk in the woods
just without a destination in mind,
that's the way I think about painting a lot.
[upbeat music]
This gives me a starting point.
It gives me something to build off of.
I'm just building random forms,
and then they kind of give me clues
what to do from now on.
[mellow music]
Even the work that is more abstract,
I'm still thinking about qualities of light,
things that I've seen outdoors.
[mellow music]
And the color qualities.
All these things enter into the work,
so it's always paramount,
that relationship to natural forms,
organic forms, nature.
I still feel very close to that.
I grew up in La Grande, Oregon.
Was born and raised there.
My dad sold wholesale groceries
and he had an office in downtown La Grande
and I'd go up with him while he worked on his books
and I had these blank sheets of paper
and I started just drawing from imagination.
[upbeat music]
I attended the college in my hometown,
which was Eastern Oregon College,
and I ended up with a degree in secondary education,
with an emphasis in art.
[upbeat music]
I started out as a realist painter.
[upbeat music]
And then growing up in Eastern Oregon,
I was really deeply involved in the landscape.
I worked hard at it, trying to translate what I saw
into two-dimensional terms.
[upbeat music]
What I loved about painting realistically
was I think it was almost sort of a magic transference
that I was after.
That I could make these flat canvases real.
But I was bored.
I felt like I was painting within my capabilities.
And then my work began to change.
[upbeat music]
And then I would think about,
well, I have the galleries, but once they understand
where I'm going and why, they'll get it. [chuckling]
But I lost a lot of people.
I lost a lot of collectors, but I think as a creator,
as a creative person, you're not the same person
20 years later that you were.
[paintbrush scraping]
I love the physical quality of paint.
I love watching it be smeared on a surface.
It's just a strange thing, you're using
animal hog hair bristles tied on the end of a stick
and pushing colored mud around
and why that's endlessly fascinating,
I don't know, but it is to me.
[mellow music]
With the Seeking Level series, it was like,
whatever happens with the work, I think ultimately
it's gonna end up with a level line
at least somewhere within the composition.
[mellow music]
Ostensibly they're seascapes, but in a pretty abstract way.
[mellow music]
The Vessels series became a way for me to focus
these abstract energies in the painting into a form.
I like the vessel as a metaphor.
It comes from the earth, but it's formed by hand
and formed by mind, so it's right at that interface
between the human and nature.
Some of 'em get pretty wild. Yeah.
And some are more focused or more restrained
and they're experiments, each one.
Well, I guess all my work these days,
it's always an experiment.
I'm pretty much centered on what's happening right now
[tape ripping]
And maybe what'll happen tomorrow.
I have no idea where the work might lead,
and I think maybe that's the best.