I have always been interested in the most fundamental elements of existence and my paintings reflect what some viewers have described as a rather ethereal, metaphysical leaning. So naturally, I felt it time to begin to play around with a subject as humble and unheroic as—well—dirt!
It’s what underlies us on this physical plane: what holds us up. It may be called earth, duff, dust, clods, muck or the stuff under our feet. Or as scientists say: “This is not dirt: it is a living organism called soil.” At any rate, these paintings are explorations and metaphors for what’s underneath us, our ground, and the idea of growth. Prior to this series I had been making paintings about the natural environment around me: forest, ocean, and depictions of time. This Terra series came out of that: what could be more elemental?
Here’s a poem I wrote some years ago when I lived on McNab Ranch near Hopland, CA, which in part inspired this Terra series:
At the ’’T’’ by the Vineyards
By the pot holes at the paved road’s end
I change the wheel hubs:
four wheel drive and glance at the stars.
—Salt scattered against blackness;
new ones added to Orion, to the Pleiades.
What else
might be jarred loose from my memory?
Recklessly tossed out, I too am fixed here,
inches from fence post shadows and headlights,
firm on the dirt.
Earth,
Erde,
Terra,
Terrace for my knees,
color of dawn’s dust.
Even if I am not now watched by some far eyes
it’s good luck, at any rate,
yoked to coordinates unknown or charted,
to be counted in among untamed life
on some faint blue planet’s acres.