Where Do My Ideas Come From?

Mar 13, 2019

I am primarily an abstract expressionist painter who paints abstracted landscapes and non-objective abstracts. You may be wondering - 'Where do I get my ideas for a painting?'

I live in extreme Southern Utah, in the desert. The landscape is harsh, consisting of red rock canyons and plateaus, with a wide variety of desert plants. In many areas there are fields of black lava rock. During the summer it is very hot, but during July and August the monsoon rains bring dramatic cloudscapes along with the rain.
However a one-hour drive north brings you to the high elevations of 10,000 ft. where the scenery is much different. Here you find forests of Pine and Aspen trees combined with the red sandstone and black lava rock. The winter brings heavy snow to the high country. 

Many of my paintings come from the landscape directly. My painting style simplifies the scene and employs an abstracted symbology set. This painting style gives the feels of the scene but they are not a true rendering of the scene.

Many of my non-objective abstract paintings also come from nature. Here I use organic shapes with colors that are representative of the landscape I want to represent.

"Xeriscape" is an abstracted watercolor landscape painting based on the desert washes that are seen around my home. "Xeriscape"

"Autumn Glow" is an acrylic non-objective abstract painting based on the fall colors of the aspen trees that grow in lava rock at the high elevations. "Autumn Glow"

I hope you enjoy these and the other paintings that you can view in my store.