When we try and preserve a moment by taking a picture or a video, we never quite do the place justice. there is too much information. There is so much going on in any given moment. when I paint or draw out side i see more and more that our landscape is consumed by urban and suburban sprawl. I want to preserve the beauty that is being engulfed. We live in a time where things are changing rapidly. Painting slows me down. I start to look. I take off the veil that is over my eyes and I see things that are always there. A constant beautiful song that is under everything but so faint that you need to stop and listen carefully to hear it. Painting and drawing do that for me. When mankind and nature are in harmony it feels right. It feels good. I love the romantic poets of the nineteenth century. they understood that nature had a voice and could teach us spiritual truths if we were willing to listen. With the dawn of industrialization these poets were aware that their beloved countryside was changing. Factories were creating dark clouds on the horizon in the name of progress. These poets like William Wordsworth mourned what was being lost and the beauty that still can not be surpressed. I too see this beauty out of the corner of my eye as it vanishes. I try and look at it. the graphite on paper turns the page into someplace that is real. The magic always works for me for some strange reason. Turning the sky and clouds into paint helps me to remember that these things are sacred. I stop to listen and hear the most beautiful music. Nobody is going to paint the same scene the same way. We all bring with us in the brush and the line something of ourselves, of our past experience, our teaching, our own vision as we respond to what it is we are seeing. It is endless. Creativity is an endless pleasure.