Joshua Tree Project:
Panoramic Surveys of Joshua Tree National Park

As a plein air painter I strive to recreate the light of the moment on my canvas. I paint on site and usually complete my painting with one sitting, only doing a minimal amount of touch –up in the studio at a later date.

For the past several years I have painted at various locations throughout the United States and Europe painting on site trying to capture that special moment before me. Locations include Yosemite National Park, Joshua Tree National Park , Cape Cod National Seashore, Blackstone Valley Corridor (Massachusetts), Sedona, Monterey, San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Big Sur, Paris and currently, West Africa.

Joshua Tree National Park does not have any recognizable, breathtaking vistas like many other National Parks but instead has a unique appeal to those who wish to stop, look and listen.  It is the kind of place where each return visit permits a deeper understanding of the setting and its amazing life forms. A sense of change and movement is crucial when viewing the landscape-which includes change and movement in light and color in every setting. It is my desire to produce a body of work that will capture the wild wonder of several locations within the park and  inspire guests to look deeper each  time they visit.

The Panoramic Survey Project

I am producing a series of paintings about Joshua Tree that articulate impressions conveyed by the flux of natural phenomena on four vistas. This would be an excerpted section of space and time.  The body of work would focus on four different settings each located within one of the major mapping directions –North, South, East and West.

Each vista is carefully studied and recreated three times:

• first in the light of dawn,

• followed by noon when the landscape often appears cartoonish because of the absence of shadows,

• last, at sunset when an effervescent light appears to radiate from the landscape. 

As daylight changes along with shifting clouds and atmospheric conditions, so do the focal points of the landscape. Just as a particular Joshua tree might be predominate in the landscape at sunrise, the noon hour might shift the focus of the eye to low lying scrub.  Evening light might once again change the focus into more of an overall tint rather than delineating specific parts of the landscape. 

All three paintings of each one of the vistas would be created from the same line of vision but would clearly reflect how light changes our perception of a setting. These would be studies in the optical qualities of light and atmospherics.  When each grouping is displayed on its directional wall within a room, in their chronological order, the viewer will get a glimpse into the dynamism of the ever-changing aspects of Joshua Tree.