In Nightscapes, a series of paintings and digital collages, I explore the eternal themes of darkness and light, knowledge and ignorance, culture and nature through a new lens: satellite imagery of the earth and universe. I create contemplative and sensual paintings that allow the viewer to react emotionally to these distant images. I use maps, geology, and climate science as much as my personal vision, engaging the issues without illustrating an opinion.

Our understanding of these new satellite images and their consequences for our culture is still in early development, but I believe they belong to the art historical landscape tradition as it moves into the 21 st Century. Through new technology we gain immense knowledge about the cosmos, simultaneously the stars in our night sky are disappearing as the face of our planet increasingly resembles those stars.

Satellite images present us with only visual information because we cannot engage with them in a tactile way. There is no texture, sound, scale, or atmosphere that relates to these images. As a painter I find this very interesting because it allows me to explore the same relationships that abstract artists have explored. However, my paintings are far from non-objective abstraction.

Abstract painters who evoke quiet contemplation, such as Mark Rothko, Brice Marden, and Agnes Martin, have influenced me. The land art movement has opened the range of themes available to me, because they introduced metaphors that are the size of the world. I reach back to Caravaggio to understand that chiaroscuro, the dramatic play of light and shadow, has deep roots in western painting. Contemporary influences include Yvonne Jacquette and Vija Celmins.

If one were to hover in space over the east coast, the lights from Boston to Washington, DC at night would form what appear to be thick luminescent ropes cascading down the eastern seaboard. Throughout the world, signs of human industrialization are visible from space as light. This web of lights spans the entire globe and clearly displays our new and colossal influence on our planet. Today we have gained more knowledge of the universe than any people in history, and every night we look for stars in a night sky that is diluted by a multitude of burning bulbs. My ultimate goal is to present the viewer with something they have not seen before, and will need to be aware of if they choose to consider humanity's current and future place in the universe.

Global North. Oil on panel. 43" x 43".