Paintings can be visual records of a place but for me they can also be a remembrance of a collection of events. The large abstracted landscapes, are layered experiences sometimes recalling the miracle of sunrises and sunsets, a time when I pause for a moment to just look, observe and vow to remember. Gardening at Dusk is the moment many of us have who wander outside in the cooler evening air and seeing a weed, reach down to pull, see another and think, “I can clean up this one little area.” An hour later, still at it, I will look up and realize that night is upon me, the woods around the house are dark and the first planets are visible in the night sky. Events and paintings can creep up on me. The challenge is to render both the event and to create on the canvas a painting that stands on its own as a series of marks, colors and shapes. This painting contains high contrast with nuanced whites against dark blue. The blues have references to Yves St. Laurent’s garden in Marrakesh, the lapis robes of The Virgin Mary in religious paintings and our own Blue Ridge Mountains. The circle shapes, a common motif in many paintings, are a shorthand and can represent many things; people, the sun or moon, trees or flowers. A goal of mine is to always allow the viewer leeway to bring personal experiences to the painting. What do you see, what does the painting make you remember, what draws you in? Success is when I overhear guests in a gallery debating various possibilities.