This series of abstract paintings is based on the landscape of Connemara, in Western Ireland. My fascination with Connemara is both personal—this region is where my maternal grandmother was born and emigrated from at age nineteen—and conceptual. The geological history is fascinating, and the austere qualities of this rocky, boggy landscape presents visual problems that challenge and inspire me as a painter.

The paintings are constructed in layers, a process that is additive and reductive. I put the paint on, take it off, and wipe more away; there’s a lot of erasure. This process imitates the way in which a landscape is altered by erosion and by layers that build up over time.

In the end, I am less interested in creating a specific, fixed image of Connemara than one that is more suggestive of all aspects of this place, the often-harsh histories that have played out there, the passage of time and embedded memories. It is this I hope to reveal: the landscape that is seen and that which is unseen or implied, suggesting the essence of place itself.

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