The Land Treasures

We treasure that which is beneath the beauty we gaze over, walk and dream upon: oil, gold, diamonds, coal, salt, the land itself. Deeply hidden and strangely attractive as well are pressures we fear—seismic, and ones of our own invention.

Last winter I felt the raw energy of the earth at the Tucson Gem Show. Thousands of people came from around the world bearing or seeking precious ore, gems, fossilized bone, meteorite, crystal and petrified wood, even moon rock. There among the crowd I felt that only the earth itself could account for the scale and intensity of this annual cultural phenomenon. Being there moved me to shift my painting process and materials, engendering the paintings of this series.

I began painting these works with large brushstrokes of latex paint, giving the canvases the sweep of space. Using acrylic paint for the first time, I worked quickly, developing the images with more risk and depth. Color, shape and light qualities characteristic of the winter Arizona desert formed under my brush—inspired by land, but not landscapes. Although the images were unfamiliar, I still knew when a painting was finished: when it gave me a sense of the place. Rather than topography, I had been impressed by a sense of deep rock.

I’ve decided that these paintings are images of what we imagine, know or suspect is hidden deep in the earth on which we walk. We are bound and held fast. The raw, rough and very, very deep beauty of the Arizona desert and the lushness of the soft undulating California hills seduced prospectors lured by buried treasure. Those gamblers devised a fit language for drilling oil and mining gold. Imaginative and compellingly romantic, their words veiled danger, calamity and great loss. I’ve entitled the paintings of the “Land Treasures” series with their poetry.