Florida Landscapes and Wildlife Paintings

After coming  to St Petersburg in the early nineties I fell in  love with the Florida landscape that we share with our nowhere-else-to-be-found bird population. I have been trying for years to capture and recapture the marvels of  light and nature that are around us every day. As we increasingly develop our human footprint  these places and  these creatures are becoming increasingly scarce and it is up to us artists and photographers to form a record of this place at this time for future generations.Before coming to Florida I had always admired the style of the great painters of the western U.S. like Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt, who showed 19th century eastern dwelling Americans the visual wonders of the Grand Canyon which was still frontier. Their grand sweeping canvases captured in almost photographic detail the sharp relief of the solid rock and the colors in the magnificent play of the light on those enormous formations. 

In this geographical area however it seems better to favor a looser approach that seems more harmonious with this particular landscape around us and helps to better render the constant movement of our grasses ,trees ,water,and of course the sky. The warm wonderful Florida paintings of Hendrick Herzog ,Whistler,and John Singer Sargeant seem to me to be the best examples of this genre and I have developed my landscape painting in something approaching this style.My work in this genre does not reflect any new technique or groundbreaking but an adherence to tradition and my honest effort to record what is around me.