"The land holds a story, an ongoing narrative element, that is becoming more apparent to me. For my landscape painting, this is an element I seek to best represent the experience of this land. Years ago, in my landscape painting, I was definitely a representational painter. It's not a bad place to start as the land in northern New Mexico is so uniquely beautiful. Now, I see and feel a poetic element to the painting of it, a manner of approaching it visually that embodies the experience of living with and in this land for so long. I'm adding my experience and voice to the continuous story that is the life of northern New Mexico. Painting in wax has been a life-altering experience, akin to learning to swim in the middle of the ocean. It is a big medium full of almost infinite approaches and possibilities. For me, it has been a matter of learning what to leave out in order to find and organize what to put in. My studio used to look like an apothecary shop, an herbalist, a grocery aisle, and an imported paper shop all in one as I explored the alchemical incorporative properties that the encaustic process can encompass. After about twenty years of painting with it I am pretty much down to just the wax. Working with the colors, orchestrating them, and using the transparency of the wax for layers and depth. I find this alone satisfying and challenging. In one word, I am looking for the “Narrative” in painting. There is an interconnectedness to life, all the elements making the whole. The narrative element is the story of this interconnection."