My visual connection to nature has its beginnings in northern California where, as a child, I roamed with my dog, Gin, over the foothills of my grandfather's ranch. During twilight I would sometimes sit on the ranch gate, waiting for my father. At these times my emotions would follow the passage of light across the valley, as it moved into dusk, and I may have connected its bittersweet hue with the pain of loneliness. The surrounding land became a kind of surrogate parent to me, always there. I suppose it followed that at age 15 I began to paint the landscape -- the long view -- and never stopped.