About
The pull
I came to ink painting through calligraphy, and stayed for the honesty of it. There is no underpainting and no correction. The brush records exactly the amount of doubt in your hand. I have spent twenty years trying to hold the brush with less doubt.
The lineage
I trained in the ink-wash tradition, first from books and museum walls, then under a teacher who made me paint bamboo for a year before anything else. The old masters of splashed ink and the great pine screens I still know mostly from museum walls and printed reproductions.
The practice
I grind the ink by hand each morning. The few minutes it takes are how a painting day starts. The paper is washi, made from mulberry fiber, absorbent enough that the brush cannot hesitate. A finished painting might take four minutes and cost me thirty attempts.
The inspirations
Winter more than summer. The Front Range in fog, herons on the South Platte, the way snow simplifies a hillside into three strokes. I paint Colorado subjects in a Japanese grammar, and the fit surprises people. It never surprises the herons.
The empty paper is part of every painting.
Exhibitions & collections
Sample entries — on the real site this section appears only if it has true contents, and is omitted entirely otherwise.