I am a landscape artist from the St. John River Valley in New Brunswick, Canada. Mostly self-taught, I paint in oils and acrylics in my studio as well as outdoors, often kayaking, cycling, or snowshoeing to find my next subject.  Getting to these places is part of the adventure.  Plein air painting (painting outdoors) allows me to combine my love of art and nature, and bring my passion for the outdoors to my paintings. It is an exhilarating experience for me to be out in the forest, a field, or on a river, feeling the sun, wind, snow or rain; hearing the birds sing or the waves crashing on the shoreline.  I am in awe of the beauty surrounding me and I want to be immersed in it and capture the moment on canvas immediately.  As the painting emerges on the canvas, it becomes my connection to these places and represents the hours I have spent absorbed in my surroundings, often in total solitude.  This solitude is comforting to me, it brings me a sense of peace and a sense of space.  

While my studio offers me time to experiment and work in a lot greater detail, painting outdoors forces me to work quickly and simplify in order to capture the light before the sun shifts and the shadows change.  This results in an immediacy and freshness to my outdoor paintings I cannot get in the studio.  The lessons I learn while painting outdoors, I bring back to my studio. While I strive to finish my plein air paintings on site, most of them get about 80% completed on site and I finish the fine details in the studio.