Rooted, 2000

In spite of the urban zones in my area of the country, mature. abounds. North Carolina's forested Piedmont is beautiful, lush, aggressive, and intense. It is also gentle, intricate, comforting, and enigmatic. the natural world is many things that I understand and that I have sought over the years to articulate. It si also many more thing that I may never understand. I seek to know the land through small daily practices like pulling weeds in my garden, walking through the woods next to my house, or painting the late evening light falling across the treetops in my backyard. In these acts there are small satisfactions: i have rubbed up against my world and made a connection. Within that connection though, there is also the understanding that while I have experienced is limited. I am limited in that I can only  know the world as it is filtered through what I have learned, what I see, what I feel, and what I have come to expect from the environment. I also impose limitation. these arise from my need to maintain control in the face of the seemingly uncontrollable. I cultivate my garden; choose a trial in the woods that has been cut; frame a landscape painting to hang on my wall inside my house away from the messiness of the real s" subject matter. The towering canopy of trees that surrounds my house is at once threatening and protective. thus, there is a gap between the landscape I hold in my imagination and that, which remains unknown.

The process of painting local landscapes has been my way of experiencing and understanding an environment to which I feel soulfully attracted. While these feelings are personal, I am keenly aware that I am participating in a long and rich tradition of depicting the natural environment. I also know that landscape representation has a history of romanticizing, objectifying and commercializing the natural world. I believe
that both individuals and cultures are caught between an inherent need to identify with their surroundings and an inability to do so without controlling it. The fence around a parcel of land and the frame around a painted or drawn landscape are both ways of establishing boundaries and securing ownership. Imposing structure on the natural world becomes a method of relating to the land.

I have sketched, drawn and photographed traditional landscapes for many years. Because I seek connection to place through a visual understanding of the natural world, I am compelled to render local landscapes. l prefer the immediacy of dry media such as pastels, graphite, and charcoal. I typically sketch and photograph on site and later use those references to develop more extensive pastel drawings in my studio. Because I am also interested in the way landscapes can be timeless and yet specific, I have recently been layering images and materials that invoke both persona and universal narratives. An archetypal house drawn on semi-transparent Mylar or a constellation embroidered onto filmy silk creates a further dialogue within my landscape drawings.