I still remember the exact feeling of reaching the summit: the sudden drop in temperature, rain turning to snow, and the long silence after hours of climbing. I was alone crossing the Pyrenees by bicycle. There was nobody to share the moment with, and yet something shifted. The landscape was no longer flat points on a map. It became something I was inside of, and it became a part of me. More than twenty-five years later, that moment of arrival has never left me.
 
When I began introducing my own children to the outdoors through hikes and longer adventures, I recognized a similar intensity in the way they meet the natural world: fully present, curious, and unafraid of scale. My paintings grow from that recognition. I place young figures in composite landscapes as agents of presence — looking, resting, moving through the scene. The subject is quiet, but the paint handling is not. I work in acrylic with saturated color, thick aggressive brushwork, and clear value structure so the surface carries force and impact. The stillness belongs to the figure; the energy belongs to the painting.
 
I work in acrylic with energetic, visible brushwork and saturated color to capture the heightened, almost hallucinatory quality of these encounters. For example, my color choices reflect the fading evening light or the brightness of spring. In a culture that rushes childhood and keeps us at a distance from the natural world, these paintings insist on presence. They record the simple, radical fact of being outside and part of something larger. The work is an ongoing attempt to hold onto that original feeling of connection with the natural world and to visualize it through the clear, unhurried attention of children.