The majority of the works shown on this website are pastel paintings completed on location. Pastels enable fast painting to capture the moment. I used thick velour material, which let deep, but not overworked, pastel color combinations arrive. The style of painting is quick with minimal meddling from thought.
When painting a tree, I remind myself "that is not a tree". There is no tree there. Since logical thought has a notion of "tree", which gets in the way. There is, however, color and light reflection, shadow and texture, shades of light and dark. One makes what one sees immediately, not what one would expect to see. One makes what one feels in that location. Often I went to these locations several times in advance to make sketches and internalize the space, working over several weeks with pencil or color, noticing proportion and light movements, before finally completing one of the pastel paintings shown herein.
Many sketches were discarded or lost; I loved what I was doing, but could not hold on to the fleeting moment. To paint from photograph or to continue and finish the painting in studio is not possible in this way, because the feeling of that place at that particular moment is there in the location, not in the studio, not in the logical mind, not in a photograph. It is not that this is the only way one should create, it is the way I did in these works.
Here I painted untainted moments. I painted "what is" in its first moment of becoming, as opposed to what I thought, which is filled with many yesterdays.
I sought the essence of the becoming of the Here-and-Now. And upon seeking this truth, it imbued me...the seer and the seen are one. Avoiding the personality's painting; the untainted moments arise from nature (for example, "Pax in Terra"), or my inner landscape (for example, the painting "Pflegekind"), but not from "the everybody thoughts".
Elucidating the becoming of the Here-and-Now, its inherent beauty and aliveness, opens the door to Truth.