Bio

    The land, the great outdoors – is sanctuary. All the lessons of life can be found there, in the cool greenspace of deep canyons, in the vast flat open spaces of desert and prairie, in the scandalous heat of barren rocky places. In the sand, in the shade, amongst the trees. We, the walkers of such space, the followers of bighorn trails – we are most alive in THIS alertness. And it is all too much, the cool thick silt of lake bottoms, the embrace of towering redwoods, the undulating conversation of foamy rock coast. How to share the peace found in these everlasting moments, to transmit bits (at best,) of this bliss, this satisfaction?

    Why abstraction? It’s the spaces between notes that makes a musical composition breathe. It’s not the overwhelming impact of majestic natural forms that teaches us the most, but the strange surprise of fragmentary color found underneath a stone. Of patterns seen first in an ocean wave, next in the immense ripple of a grand rock scape – formed by forces undetectable from our usual perspectives. These are the details that humble us, revealing how very limited we are in our daily ploddings, to the tick of a clock that refuses to fathom the satisfaction of something endless. The freshness of stripes is undeterred, we only KNOW freshness, though, thanks to a leaf sprouting newly green from the dank rest of Fall.

    Born to hunters and wanderers, it’s no surprise that a narrow path scratched by hooves across a rockface is the clearest road home. As a child, we joined another family for a Grand Canyon visit – the mother of this family was blind. Not a lot was said about this, it just struck me deeply somewhere. That the land transmits a powerful medicine. If we can FEEL our way into the experience, into the moments between notes, into the colors underneath, the rythyms beyond our usual understanding – if we can open ourselves to these simple truths – then we will know freedom.