From the beginning I was drawn to a more minimalist contemporary style of painting and loved many of the contemporary Color Field painters especially Mark Rothko and later Helen Frankenthaler. But I also loved Turner and somehow wanted to combine these. I also liked the idea of working on the edge between reality and abstraction.

In 2005 I began the series Heaven and Earth which originally was planned as a small group of abstract landscape paintings focused on a vertical format to express the vast expanse of the prairie skies with a low horizon line to give a sense of calmness. I very much had the idea of blocks of color which I liked so much in Rothko paintings but I wanted the landscape to emerge as you got closer to the paintings. Heaven and Earth remains an open series, and while I do go off and experiment with other work I still find myself very much drawn to the these sky paintings.

Heaven and Earth is about wide open or limitless space, it is also about a sense of stability and calmness or something you have always know; like going back to a favorite spot you used to go to as a child.