When I draw outside, I feel like the place in which I am sitting is giving me little gifts. It gives me shapes, textures, colors, sounds and sensations as prompts and with appreciation, I return the gift in the form of a drawing or painting.  I am reluctant to describe this exchange as if it were a relationship with another sentient being, since it suggests I’ve gone a little nutty, and strayed from rationality to favor magic! But there is something here worth considering and it’s not necessarily at odds with rational thinking that drives science and provides so many good things. Imagining the human relationship with nature as one of reciprocity, or more simply, thinking of it as a culture of gift exchange, may be the turn of mind necessary to counter the extremes of rationality that have provided argument for taking too much and depleting the natural world to the point of crisis. This is a grand thought in which to frame modest paintings of coyotes hunting and stones knocking about in the waves, but it is, nevertheless, one of the ideas that compels me to make them. 

I wrote an essay for Artforum on the working drawings of Watteau, marveling at the unselfconscious, fresh representations of ordinary things like drapery, a person, a cat or an object in the light of the studio, all arranged impromptu on the page.  Working drawings are not only pictures of things, but also representations of the act of studying. They are pictures of the phenomena of human perception. Since I’ve been focused on landscape, I’ve had the habit of making quick pencil sketches and color notations when I take a walk. I like the studies, since they are provisional and capture something of the spontaneity and instability of nature. The Field Notes series is a collection of these sketches and color notations.