The Story Behind The Windstorm

Windstorm, Diptych, Oil. on canvas

The Trees keep me safe as I tramp lonely trails on a blustery day. The higher I climb the more snatches of stormy gusts sneak through.  Boughs sway and the cracking of typically still trunks echo through my bones. I’ll keep going until I cannot go anymore. Surely I can make through the bush to the staircase 

At the stairs, the penultimate climb to the hut, a group of men in their thirties stumble down in great force/energy clamor - shaking their heads, - calling off their day. And to me: No-no - Don't go any further - it’s a dangerous day- the wind - the Wind.. 

As the stairs clear of their raucous disappointment and relinquished plans, I think, surely I can climb these stairs to the hut. I’ll just go until I can't go any further…

The stairs lead out of the forest's wind-block embrace. The shrubs and grass hug the earth tightly, made for days like these. The grasses look like ocean waves in the torrent of winds. There are higher heights in that mountain range that held back some of the wind.

Surely I can make it to the hut for a sit and a nibble.  

At the hut, a snack, a thought- I’ll go to the top of the hill and see how the connecting pass to the top looks. I’ll just see…

I walk the steeper of two trails through grasses to my thigh to have a little protection.  I pause and survey the connector trail.It leads to the top of Mt. Holdsworth and continues on through the range.

My business is not with the journey of the Tararua Range, but with this mountain, Holdsworth, itself. This is the mountain I need to speak to, to prove myself to. This is the mountain to whom I request permission to stay here in this land. I am far from home and things are beyond anyone’s control right now. I would like to stay here longer. It is safe here. I don’t know why but I know deeply that this is the mountain I must speak with.

This narrow path has a name for fierce winds that blow people right off the mountain. Can I go any further? I listen. I scan the grass and shrubs being swept into great waves of motion. I am at the height of clouds and they mask all sense of depth and direction. Through it all, I see a small pink figure that seems to float in the clouds’ mist. I move slowly, but mostly I wait. The figure comes nearer - details emerge, a petite woman in her 50s, flash pink tramping gear..  Her rhythmic movements are punctuated w/walking poles. She gets within shouting distance.

How is it out there? 

She comes closer. Oh fine!...a bit windy.

Will I be okay? 

Oh sure! Pay attention to the trail. If the wind comes up on you, you may have to get close to the ground. It’s doable. 

Just keep going until you can’t 

Short on both rhythm and style, I stumble onto the trail in my hodgepodge gear. This mountain angel ignites me with her grace to reach the top. 

The wind tests me, attempts to take my feet out from under me more than once. I hug the ground. I army crawl through the worst of it. I wonder if it's the walking poles that made the woman so infallible or if she and the mountain-winds just know each other. 

I make it to the marked peak, “the top”. I hold a humble conference at the peak. I make my request and lay my gift in a clump of grass a safe bit off the trail so as to not be stepped on. I sit at the marker and survey the area.  I can't see a darn thing. The fog is thick. I’m lucky to see two or three meters out. Enveloped in the swirling  clouds and fog, I am happy with my success.  

Happy to keep going.

Church Residency 2

JANUARY 12, 2026

What am I looking for?
In a place so full of beauty, I am on the quest for something very specific response: "aesthetic arrest”. This is a sight that stops your heart, not necessarily because of beauty, but because of a culmination of meanings, feeling and visual salience - something that holds your heart and creates a feeling of expansion. 
It’s what I want to convey in my artwork and that’s what I seek in the world.

After sketch books are full, the next challenge is to pare down a focus. I study Colin McCahon’s “Northland Panels” . The solid number of loose canvas panels offers a structure that helps me edit the flood of  ideas and move forward in an organized way with a clear goal.
Northland_Panels

Colin McCahon , Northland Panels

The residency experience, with its unique challenges, pushes me to learn, explore and respond in new ways. It is a catalyst for experimentation and often, the next evolution of an artist's working style.

I’m in a small town during the holiday season. There are no stores to speak of here in Rawene. It has an artisan shop, a cafe, a fruit/veggie shop, a bodega and a fish&chip shop.. all essentials for civilized living - but for paint/products I have to head out into the wider world. My new favorite recipes are a mix of house paint and old tattoo ink applied with homemade bamboo brushes.

Heartfelt Thank Yous to the generous local artists who helped me achieve my goals! 

Ceara Lyle, provided her sewing skills to fit the canvas with loops for hanging

Mario for providing me your old tattoo ink!

Mara Land, guided me through working w/flax in making the muka twine to hang the works

Dream Seed

Dream Seed provided a key turning point in the evolution of my painting style.

The paintings of 2024’s series ,The Mountains We Climb, are all based on very personal experiences…my story.. specifically from the sketchbooks of 2020-2021, experiences of lock down and extended stay in New Zealand. The works are figurative with elements of abstracted space.

As I begin painting in 2025, I continued the in the same manner - working pretty directly from my observational sketches. I have a few paintings going at the same time. I keep one free from thought- a place to splash color on, not tied to a particular drawing or composition.

Sometimes things appear without your supervision or instruction and beyond your own imagination. As I labored over the “thought out” compositions, that’s just what happened on my “free” canvas, a wholly unique space emerges - complete with its own timeline and topography, something that felt both natural and unfamiliar. Decay begets germination; there are places of hazard and also of respite throughout.

I had created my next step. I was in the unusual situation of studying my own work for clues on how to move myself forward. Dream Seed was titled for good reason!

This painting is the catalyst for ways to expand my visual language beyond observational symbols and to include universal aspects of experiencing our world: moving through natural spaces, feeling the elements.

My painting process changed - no longer tied to a particular sketch. Each work began with spontaneous initial marks. The composition was based on movement followed by color.

From Dream Seed came a whole new body of work! The timing was integral-

I had committed to two separate solo shows. I was not only starting at square one, I had a major body of work to complete. I had committed to both the new ideas of Dream Seed and filling the walls of two galleries with paintings yet to be painted.

Following Dream Seed came Flourish, Our Mantra and Hero’s Journey. Along with a number of small pieces and experiments, the Lightscapes series was born! The solo exhibits: Revelations in the Radiant World and Invocations of Joy were instant karma of Dream Seed at work!

The Hokianga Panels

The Hokianga is a place of overlapping histories, different cultures in a shared history cradled in a potent land.

I am here as a visitor, in residence at the Church, to make artwork in response to this most profound place. The task is overwhelming, and one that puts all of my skills as both an observer and an artist to the test.

My work needs to be accurate authentic and true to the spirit of this place.

I’m Working, I swear...

Church Art Residency in Rawene, Jan 2026

Up at dawn to make it for morning light on the Sandbar across from Opononi Beach

The Work of Art

Make a Plan. Familiarize yourself with the area: do scouting missions. Know the lighting of different times of day. Check the weather and check the tides, know the flow of the general popolation: is it a work day, a holiday, a beach day (in Boston- are the Red Sox playing?)

Bring provisions, stay hidrated, know your public toilet situation and be ready to talk to the curious folks.

That’s the basic set up. Have it all down so you can make the most of your time. Because the important part is dropping into your observational brain to find the special spirit of the place you’re drawing.

Make a million sketches … The real work starts w/the realization that you are now sequestered to the studio. No more joyrides.

Time to go through all the sketchbooks and edit down to your best ideas and favorite drawings and figure out how to grow your seeds of thought into a finished piece.

Church Art Residency, Rawene, NZ Aotearoa

The Hokianga

The Returning Place

In the norther reaches of NZ’s north island, Northland’s Hokianga is a place of overlapping histories, different cultures in a shared history, cradled in a potent land. It is where Kupe, a Polynesian first landed in ancient Māori history. The hills and shores are filled with creations stories and gods. It is where missionaries arrived with more gods…followed by a wave of colonization and political turmoil. It is the place where the past and family identity hold strong. It is the “Returning Place”.

I am here as a visitor, in residence at the Church, to make artwork in response to this most profound place. The task is overwhelming, and one that puts all of my skills as both an observer and an artist
Heaven for a traditional landscape painter, beauty in every direction!

My work goes beyond immediate visual observation. The paintings peel away typical layers and use unexpected colors to access a sense of movement and musicality. There is so much here! Every nook has history, legends, and powerful existing natural elements..

I’m looking for the essence of a place. Figuring out how to translate it into visual works that do it justice is the challenge.

From Scratch and Scribble to Painting... the Story of Cloud Trail and Flourish

Aiding and Abetting

Sometimes the initial observation isn’t the actual backbone of a painting’s message…sometimes it has more to say. I stay with an image and let it stretch out. I paint the image over and over and let it evolve.

A day adventure in Gertrude’s Saddle, in Fiordland South Island, Aotearoa-NZ is spent scrambling through thick ground cover, up smooth rock between mountainous walls sliced by continuous waterfalls. Pools of water and clouds and the trail you follow become intermingled. The first small gouache has these mountainous forms disappear in the background. With each new interpretation of this scene, the trail becomes more clear from ground into the clouds.. as if the clouds are leading the tramper up beyond the tops of the mountain peaks.

Flourish, 40×60”/102×152cm, Mixed Media

The most recent work, Flourish, inspired by Gertrude’s Saddle, there is a new, head-on viewpoint. There is no fellow tramper leading the way, there is only YOU, the viewer, who must navigate the strange space.

TUÌ CHORUS

Sunrise Hymnal

TUÌ CHORUS, Triptych, Oil on canvas, 36x54”

Focus - on every next step....

My eyes adjust to the dim light on the lower track of Mt Holdsworth and I don’t want to lose footing. I hit a good pace, racing the rising sun. I’m in the dark of the bush for a while.. as gentle light aids my sight, I know I won’t make the Hut for sunrise. I will be in the trees. I keep my pace. 

A distinct tui trill rises into treetops growing into song. The call bounces through the bush and dissolves my solitude. From a remote height in the distance, a response rings out. The initiating bird repeats his song, clear and strong. Another calls back in repetition. From every direction, from every dimension, the chorus grows in voice and volume, a Sunrise Forum.  The roundtable of tui lifts a unified voice as council. Their song envelops the forest and in it, me. 

Interloper and witness to dawn’s chorus, I hold my breath so as not to disrupt or maybe to hide myself. The chorus fades into a gentle banter of smaller bush birds, the song still reverberates. Persistent light pushes through the thickest cover, giving shape to shadows as night gives way t the Sun. 

I remain shaken, affected. 

Is this sunrise hymnal a daily ritual?  Do the songs change? What divine rite had I stumbled into? How do I paint such a visceral auditory experience? 

How do I share this?

RURU (New Zealand's owl)

Tuí sounds the day's last sunset song and all is still.

It is that time when day and night exchange shifts - in such a gentle way- it’s not so much getting dark as my eyesight seems to fade.

This is the time of magic, the time of sleight of hand, blink of eye. 

The sky is clear with dusk’s light, a parting gift left behind as the sun disappears around the bend. I walk the dirt driveway towards paddocks edged with lavender, lemon trees and flowering harakeke. A hole tears through above my head. The sky mends itself as quickly as it happened.. a glitch, a ripple in time? No no, none of this is sensible.. a fault in my vision? How odd.

Entering the yard and here is Ruru on the post in the lavender. Ruru has no noise. Flying over my head with such speed and silence, I don't decipher the dark shape as a creature of matter and earth, but instead, a blackhole’s antimatter - a streak of midnight, itself, showing up a little too early. 

Ruru turns and meets my eye with a gazes. My soul leaves me, sucked into the tiny piece of midnight. For a breath, I am 21grams lighter and then returned. She flies off and takes the remaining light with her. Shadows meld into a soft blanket of darkness.

Night falls.

Encounter at the Edge of Eden

What Happens at the Edge of Eden?

Encounter at the Edge of Eden

Encounter at the Edge of Eden remains ambiguous as we observe a group of herons (known as a “siege” of herons) and the Book of Genesis’ first woman. The painting considers that very moment of response to the unexpected… and if the unexpected is a powerful force?

Fight, Flight or Freeze - How is a person wired? How is “the first person” created?  How much have we evolved in all of this time?

The image does not acknowledge biblical ideas of right and wrong, but instead focusses on the internal workings of the animal we are, especially in our relationship with the rest of the natural world.

The herons surround her, shrinking the space as they stretch, extending wings and necks. Her surprise and vulnerability shows in her contorted back, to which is pointed a very solid beak, touched by dawn’s light. This is a situation that offers the possibility for two very opposing outcomes. Only the viewer can decide and that depends on how that individual is wired.

From the Neruda Series..

XIV from Twenty Love Poems, Pablo Neruda

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.

Every day you play with the light of the universe.Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water. You are more than this white head that I hold tightlyas a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars if the south? Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.

The rain takes off her clothes.

Yellow Garlands, oil on canvas, 18x24”, available

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. the wind.
I can only contend against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honey suckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

~Pablo Neruda

The Wind on the Island

The wind is a horse:
hear how he runs
through the sea, through the sky.

He wants to take me: listen
how he crosses this world
to come take me away.

Hide me in your arms
just for this night,
while the rain breaks
its infinite beak
on the earth and sea.

Listen how the wind
comes galloping, calling
to take me far away.

With your forehead upon my forehead,
with your mouth upon my mouth,
our bodies bound
by the love that burns us,
let the wind pass over,
let it pass me by.

Let the wind rush in
crowned with foam,
let it call and come find me
as it gallops through the shadows,
while I, who lie submerged
in your big, deep eyes,
just for this night,
I will rest, my love.

Pablo Neruda

Translation by Paul Weinfield

Morning Breaks, Night Falls

Morning Breaks, Night Falls20x40.5cm/8x16”

 Morning Breaks, Night Falls is the only small work that accompanies my Powerscapes series.

Painting while the world was on lockdown, I found my whole body was so tight, I could only work on details and small works. I had some large pieces plotted out, but didn’t have the physical capability and fluidity I needed to make progress on them. Everything was atrophied. 

But this little painting embodies all of the concepts of the larger pieces. It is the seed of the rest of the series,  capturing that motion and life in the quiet hills.

Shags on a Rock

The powerful rock juts from the cold ocean waters as the shags’ place of respite. It is a composition of dark hues and grays. The tonal palette is that of oncoming storms.

A group of shags decorate the rock in varying degrees of idleness.  The shag on the highest point stretches wings out, in confidence, knowing the sun is sure to join the ocean winds at some point.

Shags on a Rock, acrylic on paper,

Hills of Wairarapa, Settling

Hills of Wairarapa , Settling, Map collage, mixed media on board, 32x77cm

Unending hills into mountains into sky: the unending space humbles the small structure. Pockets of thick bush and rows of groomed trees and fields float in the swells and dips of this ocean of earth and rock.

In humility is strength and resolve to understand this world and persevere. You have chosen this world and this world will show you how to thrive.

The map showing through speaks to our ideas of trying to measure, categorize and contain the enormity of land and sky. Simultaneously, the maps extend ideas of space beyond the physical painting.

It is not man who settles the land, but the land who settles the man.

Ngawi

acrylic on paper, 47x70”

It’s common for an artist to speed past their best ideas. In NZ there are very few place to pull over to the side of the road that don’t involve ditches. Zipping along a windy tight road with erosion spills on one side and the ocean cliff on the other,  the steep mountain side rising above of Ngawi burn themselves into my vision-memory. I make the trip three more times before I find the perfect sandy turnoff at the right time of day to get the drawing I wanted.

The fishing village seems dwarfed, inconsequential. I transcribe the houses as small neutral dashes between the cliffs and the ocean. 

Man attempts to settle land, but truly, it is land that settles man, allows us to be here until it is  time for the earth to move again. We small creatures must move fast enough to adjust.

Tararua Range as Ocean

acrylic on paper, 47x52”

Clouds, mist, mountain ranges and rolling hills all flow together- the “Landscape” as continual movement and tides of the ocean. 

The rich growth and lush greens of New Zealand’s rainy winter emulates the greens of the ocean. The pitted hills create a visual rhythm the leads you into the mountains beyond. The heavy mists and fog of the sky toy with the space between Heaven and Earth. This piece is a visual dance.

Buddha as Mountain

acrylic on paper, 47x45”

Buddha as Mountain (Flatpoint)  

If I were any lighter, I’d be blown right off the hillside. The sun is low, wind picking up -it blows the pencil right out of my hand, like a beast. It’s toying with me. I’d driven by this grouping of hills earlier, I don’t know if I’ll be this way again so this is my only chance. I dug in, leaned against the wind and tried my best to get every curve, hill, pit fighting the wind for my pencil at every move.

The line drawing is an observation of the mountain. I know if I didn’t see it while I was drawing.. but when I pull the sketch out later, the hooded figure is clear, the motion is clear. It is very much an individual and not a still pile of earth. Tied to the earth in a grounded strong connection .. but rising up in motion in all ways… the changing treeline dancing on its shoulders.

The lines of depths, ups, downs and swirling pits .. with its own palette, I find this language of telling the mountain’s story.

Glenburn Station

Acrylic on Paper,

Glenburn Station as Sun Sets

The behemoth mountain looms in shadow, a powerful entity, its personal history tattooed all over. Scars of earthquakes, smooth rolling curves of past lives under the water, pitted divots once filled with bush all reveal a time lapse of erosion and growth encapsulated. The changing shape is not weakness, but new expanse and evolution of surface. 

Looking Out from Te Mata Peak (Rays of Sunshine) , acrylic on paper, 40x47"

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Acrylic on paper, 40x47”

Looking Out from Te Mata Peak, NZ

There is a visual quality of liquid in the mountains and hills, as if they may alter shape at any moment, move to their own tides, flow away as you blink.  A long drive through hypnotically repetitive and symmetrical hills of Hawke’s Bay cements this idea of hills as water. On that hottest of days.. I spend only enough time by the oceanside to map out a way to a mountain. I make it to the top of Te Mata Peak and look out over another type of ocean, one of stone, soil and sand...crashing waves, rolling tides frozen in the hills but alive just the same.