This is a preview of my exhibition featured at the Rowe/Lisk Gallery for May/June.
I will have several small paintings on display. Starting at 10 x 15 inches, with several at 12 x 18 inches, there will be original, one of a kind paintings for budget conscious art lovers.
As someone involved in both the visual arts and concert dance, my approach to landscape painting is theatrical. I am drawn to strong color, emotional lighting, and a human perspective.
Idaho is a land with such powerfully evocative landscape that it is a treasure house for a landscape painter. It is why I live here and find never-ending motifs to paint.
Since 1976 I have been a dancer and choreographer. For the past 21 years I am co-artistic director of the Idaho Dance Theatre in Boise, a professional contemporary dance company. I am currently working on my 101st dance.
In 1990, I sheepishly began to explore the visual arts by first drawing and then beginning to paint the Idaho landscape around me to which I have always been unusually sensitive. For some reason, this place feels deeply personal and visually comforting. Starting in 1995, I began a second professional arts career in painting to accompany my career in dance.
These two areas of art making, through their different natures, have given me a balanced life as an artist. Dance, which is a very social art and quite public and intense, contrasts with painting, which is a more solitary pursuit without the hubbub of performances.
Each informs the other for me and each helps balance the excesses of the other.