Severn, MD

My current body of work is a response to the complexity of nature. Looking out on a landscape to paint, confronted with billions of leaves and blades of grass, infinite ripples in the surface of water, or the endlessly shifting forms of clouds, a realist might attempt to render each leaf one by one just as they appear. An impressionist might discard such rendering and attempt to use color and light to give the sensation of the leaves instead. What interests me is the idea that all things exist in their current state due to either growth or decay, and that both of these processes follow patterns, and that these patterns follow rules. Rules that can be mimicked with my brush. While the work appears realistic, and hopefully imparts a sensation of place and time, it is the calligraphic chaos of rapidly overlaid patterns that informs their construction most. In other words these works are about how nature is more than what nature is.