About the Artist

I grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho, and have lived in Santa Barbara, California for two decades. Photography is my way to explore questions about ultimate meaning.

Artist Statement

I am fascinated by the way nature moves, changes, transforms. Aside from the abstract galleries (Contradictions Confirmed and Sum of the Part), my images capture the evidence of this movement, from ripples in water to landscapes transformed by wind, water, ice, volcanoes, and earthquakes.

I am also fascinated by color, and especially the idea that there is no objective color. What we experience as color is a result of light waves reflected from surfaces and then processed by our eyes and brain. In most of my images, I aim for equivalence between how I experience colors in nature and how those colors appear in digitial images and prints. In some cases, however—especially with black-and-white images like those in the [Outer] Space: The Carrizo Plain gallery—I use filters to transform the way colors appear. Why is the sky black? Why is it blue? Is it “really” either of those colors?

Finally, I am fascinated by nature’s textures. Sometimes textures are a result of natures transformations. Ripples in the hills of the Carrizo Plain show such textures. Sometimes textures are inherent in the subject. The black-and-white image in the Daisies gallery show the textures of the plant’s blossoms, stems, and roots. I often use black-and-white to emphasize texture in an image.

The images in the three Carrizo Plain galleries explore Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of freedom. "Hell is other people," he wrote in No Exit, meaning not that other people are evil or tedious, but that in the presence of others we are their object, and therefore cannot be free.

The Carrizo Plain is a nearly 400-square-mile national monument about three hours' drive from Santa Barbara. During the year and a half I spent photographing the plain and the mountains that bound its eastern and western sides I saw few other people. During some visits I saw not a single other soul. When I made these images, I was unobserved: free.

People sometimes reference "another planet" when describing these photographs. They say this n reference to the textures and shades or colors, but the absence of people contributes to the other-worldliness. The absence of people observed by me plus the absence of people observing me is what make these photographs of a kind of freedom.