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The Architecture of a Land Escape: Painting Beyond the Literal
Heavy oil impasto sculpted with custom steel knives.
When people stand in front of one of my larger canvases for the first time, their hands often instinctively twitch. They want to reach out and run their fingers across the surface.
I take that as the ultimate compliment.
To me, a landscape is not a flat image to be neatly duplicated with a fine-bristle brush. It is a living, breathing ecosystem of light, tension, and constant transformation. That is why I call these larger pieces my Land Escapes. They are not passive scenery; they are sensory exits from the noise of modern life into the raw, unmanipulated pulse of the wild.
Sculpting with Custom Steel
To capture the true gravity of a mountain ridge or the deep weight of an Idaho stream bed, traditional brushes simply won't do. I need a tool that can fight back against the canvas.
Over the years, I have turned exclusively to customized palette knives—many of them specially designed and modified for my specific approach. Instead of painting, I am sculpting. I load these custom steel blades with rich, vivid oil paint and carve thick, deliberate strokes onto the linen.
This heavy impasto technique allows the paint to catch the actual light in the room. As the sun moves across the wall where the painting hangs, the shadows cast by the thick ridges of paint shift, making the landscape change throughout the day—just like the wilderness itself.
The Collision of Color
While my smaller, representational studies rely heavily on subtle values and quiet grays, the Land Escapes are where I let color break entirely free.
I am endlessly fascinated by what I call "complementary collisions." When you look closely at a creek bed or a forest canopy, nature doesn't use smooth gradients. It uses sudden, vibrant fractures of light. By applying thick, broken color side-by-side with the knife, the colors intersect violently up close, but dance together beautifully when you step back. The composition begins to sing.
Chasing the "Perceived"
Ultimately, an abstract appreciation is crucial to this work. The absolute reality of a scene—the exact placement of every single leaf or twig—is far less interesting to me than the perceived reality.
When I am out working en plein air, immersed in the fresh air and massive vistas of rural Idaho, I am absorbing the light quality, the raw power, and a deep, contented sense of déjà vu. When I return to the studio to build these large-scale works, I am painting that memory. I am searching for the sacred balance between nature's quiet resilience and its constant evolution.
Underneath the representation of a tree or a mountain is a deeply personal aesthetic experience. My hope is that when you look at a Land Escape, you aren't just looking at a place—you are remembering what it feels like to be alive in the wild.
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