I wanted to paint these landscapes in a different way, not so much with a brush, but with scraps of card board, rags and palette knives. I liked being able to wipe thick colors over the surface and scrape or scratch it to suggest details like trunks and foliage and sticking-up blades of grass. 

In many of the Nova Scotia paintings I did this summer, I continued to work with a piece of cardbord to make the most of the rougher texture on the linen panels. I enjoyed the way the fabric's tooth broke up the painted surface, and I ended up letting this effect be as interesting as any representational detail that was needed to suggest an image. My paintings on regular stretched canvas look quite different.

These monotypes were an experiment using at least 2 plates and masking out areas of the first plate, printing it, then printing a second plate on top of it. In the masked areas the pure colors on the second plate to show up while in other areas the overlapping colors create a whole new color. The second plate can be masked as well--that is, kept free of ink in selected areas. This way when it is printed on top of the print made by the first plate, the colors in those masked areas pick up the original pure colors from the first plate.

These images are made on a cardboard plate with wallpaper and other textured papers, sand, glue, and china silk, and  then sealed with matte medium or  shellac--the less shellac, the more porous and the darker the area, as it holds more ink. The plates can be reworked, either by removing unwanted areas or adding new pieces of material. The plate itself can be incised or scratched; parts can be made smoother by adding layers of matte medium. I like the clumsiness of collagraphs, the torn edges, their sculptural quality, and their unpredictability. They are difficult to ink up as the surfaces are so uneven and it takes awhile to get a feel for how they will print.

Soft ground color etchings with aquatint, lithograph & colors added with chine collé 

In the late summer, I paint along the southwest coast of Nova Scotia. The air can be cool and vaporous when rain or fog are on the way, while at other times, above and below  you see the bluest of blues. 

Reflections with exceptional geese on a nearby pond

Small & very small landscapes with buildings, fields, sunflowers, ponds