I think these paintings are like hymns for a mysterious American landscape that we have steadfastly conquered.

Although I painted them in a limited palette, I don’t think of them as dark, perhaps melancholy. Most of the images come from 19th century photographs of the west from the likes of Carleton Watkins and Timothy O’Sullivan. They capture a raw, dangerously beautiful and unforgiving world. Before freeways and shopping malls there was this pristine, mysterious land.

Perhaps this series is mostly a longing for the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains where I played as a child, an imagined wilderness that was the west that was.

“Let me ride through the ridge where the west commences. Stare at the moon until I lose my senses, I can’t stand hobbles and I can’t stand fences…Don’t Fence me in.”

– Cole Porter