Most of my life has been spent in orchards: looking at them, looking through them, and working in them.
I went without oil paints for four years in Australia and instead worked on small gouaches of flowers. Then I switched sketchbooks and started playing with images of salt-damaged trees. After painting one side of a page, I would close the book to create a mirror image, and then used these mirror images as starting points for further exploration. This is the origin of the panels, a left page and a right. The images needed more space than a sketchbook allows.
This work is a result of observing orchard patterns. Light interception and distribution in the texture of the canopy, thin passages and thick shaded areas. It is about trying to see problems before a crop is impacted.
It is about the orchard in winter during pruning season. There is the muted color of winter time — color that is there but one has to look closely to see it — sky, horizon, foothills, wires, poles, leaders, limbs, spurs, tape, weed strips, leaf litter, weeds, and soil.
Repetition and iterations, texture, layers, lines, rows, trees, limbs, positions, units, dust, rain, mud, dew, the smell of blossom, sun, heat, fog, cold. Clear nights with no wind, the long process, fear of hail, time, the passes through. Going back to check, always looking.
Over miles of spur canopy, why do we only look at certain parts? Now. The layers. The jobs. The repetition: How many times have I pruned this tree? How many times have I run this row? How many iterations? How many lines?
I am always looking to the side — checking the texture of the light entering the canopy — how far through can I see?
This work is the sum of many landscapes and many seasons in the orchard.