Technique

I search for my earth colors, studying the landscape and getting to know a place before I dig (always with permission). A southwestern road - or a trailside can furnish a glorious batch of natural pigment: gold, green, blue, orange, brown, silver, black, red, pink. I collect dirt, mud, sand, and rock that I crush and mix. Then when wind and weather are right, and I've found the right patch of ground for laying out unprimed unstretched canvas. I'm bent over for about two hours applying color and texture with my hands or weeds, branches, or brush. The piece may then take up to three or four hours to dry enough - to a consistency like a tanned hide - before I can move it. A completed work can suggest, simultaneously, huge forms seen from long distances or small things much magnified. My Earth Paintings are celebrations of nature: river beds or mountain ranges seen from ten miles up, a canyon's geology, the anatomy of a trout jaw, an amoeba extending a psuedopod, the diagram of a molecule. They provoke reflection, evoke responses to a place and a deep healing.

HANGING EARTH PAINTINGS

The earth paintings are painted on the ground on unstretched artist canvas and they do not dry square. Framing them is difficult. I personally feel that they are best hung unframed.
Nature is not framed.

I suggest using push pins or small nails. The paintings hang like wall hangings. The paintings look nicer and are easier to hang if when they are being put up, they are not stretched out tight. Sculpture them, allowing gentle hills and valleys to be created. The earth painting will encourages you to participate in its making by creating highlights and shadows and in contemplating the deep beauty and spirit of Mother Earth,.,

If someone insisted on a frame, they would need to pin the earth painting within the frame, as they have not dried square.

Another hanging style is to nail the painting to the top of a piece of driftwood, or other appropriate wood. This allows the painting to flow down, away from the wall.

Many people who have purchased an earth painting were going to frame it, but after being on their walls they realized it did not need a frame. Nature is not framed. The earth paintings have a leathered textured when dry. The soil soaks into the artist quality canvas.

What I Feel When I Paint