TREES MOVING IN THE WIND

WERE ONCE PROTONS

or IMAGINATION —Michael McClure

I paint to navigate a partly imagined terrain—tender, random, and fleeting. My subject matter is the overlooked: water, ponds, puddles, weeds, and woodland debris. I’m drawn to the microcosms beneath our feet and just ahead on the path.

I sense the weight of air, the syntax of botanical shapes, the mystery of found objects, the calligraphy in water ripples and tree bark. I live for the moment when a fox darts from the brush, or when shadow and light fracture across the woodland floor. As both painter and photographer, I am especially moved by views of the earth from airplane windows—abstract, fragile, immense.

The act of painting is fast, physical, and intuitive. I layer oil, acrylic, gouache, oil stick, ink, pencil, and collaged paper—materials that mirror the variety and density of the natural world. Color, transparency, and surface are the true subjects. Though my work is abstract, it concedes to nature. I occasionally embed photographic fragments so subtly they go unseen—but their resonance lingers, like déjà vu.

McClure had it right—this is all temporary, and it is changing fast. That sense of impermanence pulses through my studio practice, charging the work with a sense of magic.

I live and work in Winters and Sausalito, California. I received my BA in Studio Art from UC Davis, where I studied painting and printmaking with Wayne Thiebaud and Roland Petersen. I returned to painting full-time in 2017, and have recently studied with Fran O’Niell (New York Studio School) and Enrique Martínez Celaya.