| About the Artist: |
A few years ago, while driving down the highway at night in my hometown, I was overwhelmed with nostalgia for my childhood. I then realized there was a brownout and, with all the streetlights extinguished, the dark road was as I had experienced it as a child, before we replaced stars with sodium-vapor bulbs. Over the years, on visits to my childhood home, I had been incensed by the new three-story beach "mansions" and tee-shirt dealerships, yet had taken little notice of the street lighting that had altered the nature of night itself. The dark highway was a visual prompt into a memory of my past, something that rarely happens, especially in contrast to the constant reminders of other times through taste, sound and smell.
This is how I came upon my current project, an exploration of night as seen through a car's windshield. In a few years, the highway power cartel will replace the greenish mercury-vapor and pink sodium-vapor streetlights that dominate my work with sun-like halide bulbs, once again altering our nocturnal world (and my palette). My goal is to get my present experience down on canvas before it disappears.
People sometimes think my work is critical of modern life because my landscapes comprise buildings and cars, not the more traditional trees and fields. In fact, I paint what I paint because I believe my subjects are beautiful. People have also told me they have more fun driving at night after seeing my work. Me too. Observing taillights reflect off wet pavement or comparing the distance at which different colored auras bleed into the mist makes hydroplaning in traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge bearable. |
Members Gallery 
