I paint the American landscape as a place both observed and reinvented. Rivers, waterfalls, trees, roads, and mountains from Appalachia and the Blue Ridge provide much of my source material, but I am less interested in describing nature literally than in translating its movement, color, and energy into paint.

I build paintings from a combination of direct observation, my own photographs and drawings, memory and invention. At times I combine elements from different places or manipulate an image before painting begins. The landscape becomes raw material rather than a fixed scene.

Working in oil and flashe, I simplify forms, intensify color and push familiar places toward something more graphic and slightly unreal. My approach draws from modern painting, particularly David Hockney, Alex Katz and Gregory Botts, but also from the visual language of classic Warner Bros., Disney and Hanna-Barbera animation. I am especially interested in painted animation backgrounds, where an entire world can be constructed through shape, color and atmosphere.

I think of the resulting paintings as hyper-natural rather than naturalistic. They remain rooted in places I know, but observation, memory, and painting transform them into something heightened.

Beauty, humor, peace, and joy are intentional parts of the work. I want the paintings to carry that energy outward.

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