"This painting began as a plein air work on the Bennington College campus during a summer workshop. It was then completed in the studio. That process, from purely visual engagement to a more reflective one, allows me to recall the landscape as a mental/emotional/spiritual experience rather than simply a locale. This begs many questions about what is real and what is illusion. I’ve come to recognize that all of experience is grounded beyond (or beneath) the sensory world and actually resides in consciousness.
Landscapes, with their profusion of forms, textures, and atmospheres, evoke infinity for me. Most of us seek out landscape experiences to, in some way, immerse ourselves in something larger than finite being. I have tried to represent that yearning and, hopefully, some of the baptismal process of being remade through contact with something bigger than ourselves. I have come to see that paintings themselves are like landscapes, ponds, skies, inviting immersion, travel, refreshment, … rebirth?
Why The Veil? The line of trees block our way like fears and attachments rising up and keeping us from the big view."
Stephen Rose
