I once painted a watercolor thirty times—keeping the same size, the same palette, and the same landscape image. What I varied were the sequences of washes and applications of brushstrokes. I sought to find the way of painting that watercolor. I did not necessarily think I would find the only way or even the best way, just the way. This notion is rooted in oriental and expressionist painting. My work in this show continues this serial vein of exploration but expands it by repeating motifs using different images within a series. Each series has a common thread of subject or theme. Not shown are the repeated studies of the studies.

Painting is a process through which the expression of the nature, feeling, and sensitivities of the artist are revealed. Oriental calligraphy with its rigorous traditions of creating images and forms through a highly proscribed sequence creates a kind of freedom—one that allows the unconscious subtlety of the painter to emerge—just as handwriting unconsciously reveals much about the writer.

The final theme among my varied sets of serial paintings stems from my training in architecture. It is the play of precise, regular geometry against the unruly intricacies and freer forms of nature. With our great vistas in Kansas, I like to make the horizon a tangible line against which the ruling sky cavorts, while the undulating ground plays a rhythmic base. Human-made elements most often are linear and geometric and they heighten my sense of the scale and power of the natural elements of our landscape. I see geometry and nature on the Great Plains and in my neighborhood gardens.