For the past several years, my concentration has been on the primal swamps of Florida and the southern United States, where I have found an intensification of the elements I seek and attempt to communicate in my work.

As the ecological crisis accelerates, I find that my response to the swamps I visit intensifies. And the need to communicate the fragile wonder and life-affirming experience also intensifies.

It is difficult for me to understand man’s age-old need to destroy and control nature. There seems to be a love/have/fear relationship in operation. We see the fearful avoidance of nature in Western art until the Reformation, when the terror and power of nature appears (particularly in Northern European painting). As time progressed NATURE became LANDSCAPE and European art depicted it in a controlled manner.

Because of this diminishing of the nature experience, I respond more to American painting of the 19th and early 20th century, where I find an awe and acceptance of man, both in nature and as a part of nature. There is also an awareness of all of the aspects of nature, even if they are frightening or overwhelming. In addition, I have responded to Eastern art and philosophy, which understands man as an element of nature, and recognized our need to continue being a part of the natural world.

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