When I was last in Maui, I visited a stream coming down from a waterfall on the north side of the island. It had a streambed with many interlocking hexagonal stones. It was amazing and almost hard to believe and beautiful and particularly satisfying to me. An artist friend later spoke of skin diving to the bottom of a deep pool on the island, seeing a perfect hexagonal hole several feet deep and about 5 feet wide in the middle at the bottom. I love hexagons. They are the most technological looking of shapes, yet they occur more often in nature than just about any other geometric shape besides, I suppose, triangles. So when I include hexagonal patterns in my landscape paintings, I am including something rather futuristic, to some eyes, and unusual, but by no means unnatural.
Sometimes in my paintings I will place some kind of jewel, like a precious stone set into a rock. It should be seen as a symbol of unity, being of circular shape. And also as egg shaped, a symbol of the creation of existence out of non-existence. As a very man-made looking object it, to me it indicates man's central and unique role in nature.
The important thing is what this jewel says about the place and the people who visit it. In my imagination, there is a place where explorers all realize that the greatest value of this thing is in the delight it will give to all those who come upon it in its unique setting.
This unique setting is what I try to evoke in my paintings. I think of it as a kind of "vortex" within an otherwise more random and homogenous landscape, where the linear grid lines of continuous pattern begin to curve and spiral into something more unique, anomalous, unexpected.
In the context of mountains, a river has the nature of a vortex. To a river, a waterfall is a vortex. To a waterfall, a jagged jutting rock may be a kind of vortex. On a rock, a single little plant. In the plant is a flower; and in the flower is a seed. A seed is a good example of the vortex. It is the place you want to finally get to. It holds itself; orbits around itself. Its components fit together perfectly. It spirals and dovetails into and out of itself. It has a magical way of opening out to the future. The Hawaiian Islands themselves have this magical quality of being unexpected magical jewels in the midst of the vast, relatively linear and uniform substance of the Pacific Ocean.
When I begin a painting, I am first, in my mind constructing a kind of 3-D model of the place. By getting the spatial relationships clear from the start, I am more able to convey to the viewer a place she can not only see, but also feel herself moving through.
Another way of describing these places is that they are sacred places, but not because it says so in the travel guide or because a native person tells us a myth. They are sacred because their beauty is so deep and mysterious that we are stopped in our tracks. We have hiked for hours, we have overcome our boredom and fatigue and we are rewarded with an intimate elegance so satisfying that for the moment we can't imagine anything better on earth or in heaven.
In their quest for beauty, the artists of the 20th century had a revolutionary message: that beauty was not limited to pastoral portraits of history or the nobility of the landed gentry as was the idea of artists who existed before them. Later, in the 1950s and 60s, the point was pressed home by obscure and minimalist artists who, with the proper dedication, uncovered beauty even in chunks of concrete block. Point taken, but the point is missed if we don't go on to apply our newly enhanced and refined eye by once again looking more deeply at nature.
My purpose in painting is not just to create attractive objects, but also to try to remind people to look more closely at nature's concrete blocks: dead branches, tree trunks, craggy gnarly rocks, monotonous hillsides and inaccessible terrain, as well as frothy seashores and silky luxurious jungles. You prepare yourself by looking at the Grand Canyon. You prepare yourself by looking at concrete blocks in museums. You prepare yourself by looking at the vacant lot out behind the liquor store. You prepare yourself by looking at inspiring paintings. And, if after preparing yourself, you have the good fortune to discover a truly sacred place, you will recognize it and rejoice.