Prevailing Geography

During the last couple of years, I’ve spent a lot of time walking on a beach with towering bluffs in my neighborhood. Large outcrops of serpentine rock cliffs, given shape by time and the elements, rise from the sea.

This San Francisco seascape, tucked into the shoreline near the Golden Gate Bridge, is constantly changing. A unique maritime plant community thrives on the sand dunes that cap the hillside: ground-hugging mats of vegetation, Mediterranean shrubs, coastal scrub, and native wildflowers.

Flowering Grasses

Some days, I try to wrap my mind around the fact that the rocks at the base of the Baker Beach bluffs date back 125,000 years.

October Sun

A fold in this dramatic and thrusting geography is an endless source of inspiration for my abstract paintings.

What does abstract a landscape mean? The landscape is a point of departure. I explore the cliffs in dozens of different ways.

Baker Cliffs

In my initial rough sketch, I study and unify shapes on the crag. My image is focused primarily on contours and masses, then light and shadows.

Further decisions can include the choice of color palette, a conceptual idea I’m exploring, the quality of my brushwork, or forms of natural energy flows. I rearrange and embellish in imaginative ways as the painting speaks to me.

Small Town