Original Art from Northern Minnesota

Art should make you feel how something is, how it works, what its essence is. Sumie tries to paint the motion of water flowing, a tree anchoring to the earth, how a person moves. To paint this way one needs to get into the action of painting and enter into a zen-like feeling. Sumie is not the only type of painting that requires this zen-like focus. Any kind of painting requires immense focus. Another fun way of painting is to start from a gift; a gift of color and form made with whimsy and then images are imagined out of this but with an understanding of real forms we can recognize. I call this Chinese lost form painting. In a third way of painting, sometimes painting in nature directly is so invigorating that the sense of aliveness carries the painting to a level of expression of the dynamic events going on. This is called plein aire painting.

The art works presented here are examples of these ways of painting.  I create original artwork from Northern Minnesota using a variety of media, including sumie ink, pastels, watercolors, and oils.