Blogging:
“Canvas & Conscience: Art in a Changing World"
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How Nature Painting Connects Us to Our Inner Landscape
What I've learned from years of hiking and painting is that the outside in the foothills is that it awakens the wilderness within us. That untamed part of our creativity, our authentic emotions, our connection to something bigger than ourselves needs regular contact with nature.
“Over the Barren Ground.” A Painting About the Weight Nature Carries
“Over the Barren Ground” is more than a figure—it's a metaphor for exhausted farmland. A visual reminder that nature is wearing down, quietly, beneath us. Living near the fields, I’ve seen the balance shift—fewer birds, vanishing bees, dry soil. This painting is that story in paint.
Why Climate Change Art Matters: When “Half-Measures” Aren't Enough
"Traditional plein air painting celebrates nature's beauty, but what happens when that beauty is under threat? Over years of regular observation, you develop instinctive awareness of environmental rhythms. This intimate knowledge becomes the foundation for authentic environmental art that captures both beauty and loss. With that thought you change how you paint, to reflect the emotional experience.
Painting Memory, Fire, and Ocean
“To Say the Storm” is an abstract seascape shaped by memory, fire, and change. It captures what the Pacific feels like after wildfire smoke, runoff, and the loss of my longtime art studio in Pacific Palisades. The painting is all built with thick oil of the ocean and sky.
A Post and Painting About Waste and What We Ignore
Discover the powerful environmental message behind this abstract landscape painting. Through layered compositions and earth tones, the artwork explores themes of neglected resources and hidden potential. A beautiful reminder to value abundance and reduce waste
Painting a Place We’re Losing to Climate Change
In this blog post, we explore the meaning behind “Unfolding Fields,” a piece that speaks to my connection to nature, memory, and quiet reflection.This post reflects on how abstract art can embody memory, presence, and place. Each year, the land changes. This painting became a quiet call to protect what’s left.
Crop Rows Painting About Land, Pressure, and the Past
“Faultline Memory “ is an oil painting that reflects rural landscapes and the emotional layers found in farming life. It is a painting about land, pressure, and the stories held beneath the surface in farming communities. The thick texture and natural palette connect to rural memory and emotional resilience.
Social/Political Art: When Safety Feels Like a Trap
Using baby shoes and a heavy horseshoe, this piece talks about stress, systems, and how safety can sometimes hurt. “Iron Cradle assemblage sculpture is about children, anxiety, and how even good intentions can turn into traps.
Creating Art in a Hurried World
Every artist knows the feeling of creative paralysis. It’s that sense that your ideas and expressions have frozen solid, immovable and heavy. Working in black and white stripped away distractions and forced me to confront the essence of what I wanted to express. The process mirrored my own journey of breaking through creative blockages.
When a Painting Tells You to Slow Down
We’re not built to go nonstop. This painting is about what happens when we pause. It’s not lazy or passive—it’s a form of presence. It is a black-and-white painting about calm, made after a quiet hike. It’s not loud or dramatic—it just exists. It invites you to do the same: slow down and breathe.
"Blunt Force Trauma". When Art Has Something to Say
Blunt Force Trauma is a raw, emotional piece confronting the trauma of family separation at the border. It uses text, texture, and imagery, steel and stencil to highlight asylum, exile, and state violence. It reflects my personal responsibility as an artist to speak out.
When Sports Meets The Tribal Nature of Baseball Art
Sports art isn't just about the action. It's about the stories, emotions, and ideologies beneath the surface. The catcher, the swing, the stance. They all say something more. When I paint sports, I’m thinking about more than just the game. I think about how people connect to teams, players, and moments in ways that go deep. Sports art often reflects loyalty, identity, and even questions about fairness. That shows up in the way I paint, even when I’m not trying to say something specific.
When Landscape Painting Becomes a Meditation on Journey
For me, this painting isn't just about capturing a beautiful scene but about exploring our relationship with challenging transitions. Nature provides the perfect metaphor—constantly changing, enduring, and ultimately finding pathways forward, even through the most difficult terrain.
Harmony in the Tides. My Tidepool Adventure
Have you ever noticed how the ocean's tide cycles mimic life? Low tide brings solitude, when everything is calm and the tidepools sit quietly under the sun. High tide brings connection, as each pool is swept into the vast ocean again. And then there's the ever-comforting renewal when the waters retreat and leave behind a refreshed shoreline.
Farming Inspired My Landscape Painting
In this blogpost I reflect on how creating my impasto landscape painting “Veins of Life” in a farm field taught me about the patience, risks, and resilience of farming life. Idraw parallels between the slow rewards of art and the daily gambles of nature.
“Borrowed Time” - Art and the Climate Crisis
As art mirrors the fragility of nature, Borrowed Time with its compelling strokes remind us that climate change is happening now and that thoughtful, committed individuals can spark meaningful change.
Exploring Tidepools Through Art
As an artist who regularly visits these fragile ecosystems, I have become aware of my responsibility toward them. When I paint a tidepool, I'm not just creating art. I am documenting something that may change or disappear as our oceans warm and acidify.I am a witness to the change.
Resilient Fields: My Paint vs. Real Life
Creating art is a profession of hope. Every time I set up my easel at the edge of these fields, I'm betting on something beautiful emerging. This landscape isn't static. The fields are in constant change with the elements. The patterns show cultivation while the dramatic sky suggests nature's unpredictable response
Capturing the Rhythm of the Basketball Court: My "Venice Beach Street Players" Painting
Thinking about and watching the NCAA's Final Four during March Madness reminded me of this basketball painting I created for the NBA, Orlando Magic; Amway Sports Arena. My painting "Venice Street Players" captures the raw energy and creativity of basketball games on Venice Beach's famous courts. These courts, known from the "White Men Can't Jump," movie are special to me. I spent a lot of time around them when my girlfriend (now my wife) lived in Venice, California.
“Pathways Unseen”: When Landscape Art Becomes Environmental Advocacy
As budget cuts to environmental programs deepen and protection of public lands weakens, many precious ecosystems hover on the edge of irreversible change. "Pathways Unseen," a textured impasto landscape, serves as both artistic documentation and quiet protest against environmental uncertainty. The hidden trails referenced in the title "Pathways Unseen" take on double meaning—they represent both the subtle contours of the landscape itself and the increasingly limited opportunities for people to experience these spaces firsthand. Each impasto brushstroke preserves what budget constraints threaten to erase.