"Outside In" Exhibition at Claire Elizabeth Gallery

I recall planting sunflowers when I was young, fascinated more by their size and speed of growth than by their beauty at that point.  This would be the same time that my brother and I tried to avoid, often unsuccessfully, to keep our basketballs and footballs out of my mom's rose garden.  My first flower bed to really design and plant was in my college years, at my parent's house one summer when they had moved to a town where I didn't know anyone.  But I believe that when I fell in love with plants, flowers, and the garden was as a newlywed.  I didn't know it at the time, but the love I had for my wife as we were learning about each other and how to create a home together coalesced into a direct connection of our relationship and the cultivation of beautiful things.  

Many gardens later, I have yet to find anything that connects me to God and even humanity more than the grown environment.  And while I have painted in the garden a lot, it has only been the past few years that I have brought the garden inside the studio.  Cuttings from the garden arranged for a still life painting certainly has roots of inspiration from the fact that my wife is a floral designer, but what we are creating is very different.  Her work is sculptural, 3-dimensional and ephemeral experiences of multiple senses.  My arrangements are designed for a 2-dimensional surface where light is a lead character in the play.  

With this body of work I strive for something simple, graceful, and elegant.  I believe that there is still a place for beauty in art though that's rarely its sole purpose.  I draw a lot of inspiration from Japanese aesthetics.  In 2019, I had the great pleasure of exhibiting work in Tokyo, and like any international travel it was life-giving.  It is my hope that this work provides opportunities for reflection and contemplation through the use of closely observed and sensitively painted cuttings from the garden.