Blacksburg, VA
Grass is green, grass is good. Golden strands stripe their way across green moss or peel out of blue snow. Grass can be one thing or many, a single line or a field of color. Grass stands strong atop the grandest mountains and it billows gently around our homes. I love to notice small moments in nature, whether it be grass or fallen branches or utterly ordinary patches of foliage. In my paintings, I’m interested in how the feeling of a place can be built out of these moments through pattern, color, and line. I use gouache to paint negative space around translucent shapes. This process allows me to maintain the luminosity of leaves in the light and grass in the night. These moments of light are fleeting while plein-air painting so I work quickly and often paint multiples of the same scene. I’m curious how a landscape can be abstracted but the feeling can remain literal: sometimes pastoral, sometimes warm, sometimes joyous, sometimes melancholy, sometimes a feeling you remember but can’t quite name. Throughout all those feelings I find grass and I am moved by it’s sway.
