"… repetition is reassuring, terrifying and mysterious all at once -- it is a field of dreams and a comfortable prison, part of the cosmic continuum, something that's been there since the beginning. Repetition is difference repeated within such narrow strictures that it opens new possibilities." Jerry Saltz (http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/saltz/saltz4-3-06.asp)

These landscapes were created with Adobe Photoshop from my original photographs. The photographs, which document uncultivated nature, are the raw materials for the final images. In the finished artwork, images of nature are modified by the linear logic of a computer language.

The chaos of the wild landscape is tamed by the structure created through software processes. The images take on the qualities of pattern, structure and symmetry. The relationship between the organic (nature) and the inorganic (structure) creates a tension and a distancing from nature. The artworks reflect a connection with the natural world that is hampered by the mediation of logic.

Society's relationship to nature and technology is always changing, possibly more so in the last 25 years than ever before. Personally, the first half of my life was lived without computers, cell phones, video or ipods. I grew up with a love of nature and often took long walks in the woods in upstate New York where I lived for a time. Later in life, living in New York City, I worked as a computer artist. Then the Internet began to be a daily activity. Video, cable TV, computer games, ipods etc… were all added to my life along the way. I realized that the dichotomy between nature and technology was playing itself out in my own life, through my personal history and on a daily basis.

As an artist, I had been making abstract paintings and studying the history of Modern Art. I eventually came to the conclusion that I could not connect the art I was making to my daily experience. I felt that my artwork was not as assessable to the viewer as it could be. I knew that I wanted to use my computer skills in my artwork as a way to relate my art to my life.

There is a continuum of form from the paintings I was doing before and the computer images I am making now. When I was painting I combined distinct processes to create contrast, which became the expression of the artwork. I was never interested in telling a story or perfecting a representational style. My interest has always been in texture, line and pattern. Process is always the impetus for the image whether painting on canvas with a paintbrush and masking tape or cutting, copying and pasting on the computer monitor. The computer is a tool, and like any other art-making tool, it leaves its distinct mark on the artwork. And that is as it should be, IMHO.