In West Texas and New Mexico, sunlight has a powerful physical presence that dramatically reveals and obscures as it interacts with a landscape which itself fluctuates between saturated extremes and subtle delicacies.  This creates a visual dynamism and energy which haunted me during my life in the southwest and inspired an exciting new series.      From 1992 to 1996 I lived in Lubbock Texas, several hours east of the New Mexico border.  Lubbock is located in the middle of West Texas's Llano Estacado, the semi-arid, windy, and very flat lands forming the southern end of the Great Plains.  It is cattle and cotton country, given to intense sunlight, sudden dust storms, and wide horizons.  Along the eastern edge, the plains drop off sharply in a series of deep ravines and arroyos where the red rock and soil lie raw and bare along canyon walls and river beds.  In camping and painting trips in Texas, I  traveled from the northern caprock canyons of the northern panhandle south to the sublime and harshly beautiful land of Big Bend National Park ("Terlingua Evening").  In New Mexico, I painted in the Abiquiu area so favored by Georgia OíKeeffe ("Northwest of Abiquiu");  I discovered and sketched petroglyphs and adobe missions ("Abiquiu Mission");  I spent time in the Ancient Pueblo (Anasazi) ruins of Chaco Canyon in Northwest New Mexico  ("Penasco Blanco Trail") and in Bandelier National Monument ("Frijoles Canyon Wall").      I became fascinated by the way in which petroglyphs interact with the rock of the physical landscape, even as their designs suggest the existence of psychological and spiritual landscapes beyond the realm of conscious vision.   Although my petroglyph paintings might not seem to fit concepts of landscape painting, I see them as yet another way to embody my experience of place.  In fact, the abstraction inherent in petroglyphs might even suggest more clearly than a traditional panoramic scene that the "presence" of place is a multi-level experience.

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