Painting is a doorway into a Mystery as experienced in old church architecture where all parts reveal a cosmic relationship to the earth as part of an organic whole. A French acquaintance, on hearing my interest in French Romanesque Chapels, sent me a book on sacred geobiology. The book's diagrams reveal how Roman churches were constructed to profit from the energy of the earth via ley lines and underground waterways. I dowsed the gallery floor to apply the principles described in the book in order to connect what I make to what already exists in the UI Kokomo Art Gallery.

To find the equivalent of the energetic phenomena of French Roman churches in the Midwest, I researched via the internet to learn who lived in Indiana before Europeans came. Good fortune connected me with the Nation of Miami Indians of Indiana whose complex is located in Peru, a mere 20 miles from Kokomo. There are now over 6000 descendents of a small group of about 300 Miamis who stayed behind during 1840's time of removal.

Mississinewa River with Crane and Ash Tree was painted shortly after I returned from my first visit with the Miami Indians in Peru. I connected that experience to my own environment by painting the ash tree in my back yard. The ash tree exerts a presence that infuses many of my paintings in this project. It fills the large north window of my studio, where I watch the seasons change in its branches, and the many animals that make their homes in its branches.

Most of my oil paintings are constructed with very loose, horizontal brush strokes. Gesture is a meditative practice and an experience of wonderment with the act of painting itself and its material manifestation. I see my gesture as a connective device, allowing all of the complexity of subject matter to co-exist in the overlapping of my story with that of the Miami Indians.



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