"It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life."

— Rachel Carson

This show continues a series begun in last year’s exhibit, Earth Unknown, a look at landscape not as scenery, but as Earth under threat. Art has always been there for me. My grandfather was a marble sculptor whose work can be found in New York city, including Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. In my small way, I continue that tradition that began in Carrara, Italy.

I grew up in southern Ohio where I spent afternoons scouring "cricks" for fossils and rocks in mud flats, which was an area completely cleared of trees and vegetation in preparation for new housing. My interest in nature, whether trees, or the treasures that lie below still sustain me. Living in New England for fifty years, shaped by its light and weather, its marshes, shorelines and heavy skies has been rewarding.

I work in oil paint mixed with cold wax medium, building surfaces in layers through addition and removal, scraping back, incising marks, revealing color beneath. The paintings in Elements of Earth and Sky live somewhere between observation and imagination. Some begin with photographs I've taken. Many begin with color and intuition. I see the horizon lines that run through most of this work not a boundary, but as a threshold between earth and sky.