For me, landscape painting is a search for the phenomenally beautiful. When painting the landscape, I try to find a view with a little bit of magic, and then magnify it. I’m always attracted to the slant of late afternoon light. The golden hour is my favorite time of day, because I love seeing how sunlight hits forms and illuminates them with warmth. Some of my smaller pieces are painted plein air, but most are composed through various sketches and photographs that I take and then piece together. I sometimes wonder why I choose to be a landscape painter and live in the city, where the landscape is scarce, but I think that its scarcity creates the desire to produce landscapes. Maybe not being in the country very often makes one want to bring it into one’s home like a souvenir. I go on short trips to the country many times each spring and fall to gather resource materials, and I take pictures of beautiful trees near our house. So my paintings often have a mix of manicured elements and more natural ones. Last fall I came across some fields of goldenrod at a forest preserve near Chicago that inspired several paintings. The bright fields of warm gold created a dramatic contrast with the dark green trees and cool blue sky. This summer I took photos in Michigan of small lakes, orchards and vineyards that inspired a series painted on silver leaf panels. I also took photos of wrought iron in Savannah, Georgia, and the marshgrass in Hilton Head Island this year, and took advantage of a mystical fog that drifted up one morning from the Chattahoochee. These locations all provide me with new compositions and subject matter to explore, always searching for magical, almost unreal imagery that takes my breath away.