I recently moved to southern Colorado, home of the iconic American landscape of desert and mountains, of cowboy movies and SUV commercials.

The grand tension between large, limitless natural forces pushing against small, resolute habitation is a concept that defines so much of our American myth and identity. Yet such a relationship seems a less accurate reflection of our current relationship with the land. The familiar outline of the mountain range is still visible, but the land is developed, surveyed, known.
We are no longer in the natural areas that have historically defined the West, but instead experience it at a distance, from the mundane in-between places at the edge of the developed world. Out here in the parking lot and along the road is our chosen perspective.

In this series I look for where this mythic relationship between humans and nature still exists. Perhaps it now in smaller, more easily overlooked moments, like the dust devil venturing into a parking lot or crows eating leftovers on a picnic table. I have tried to render the rest areas and motels with the same care and sympathy as more traditional landscape paintings of mountains and forest.

Admittedly, these places are not beautiful in a traditional sense, but my aim is not to condemn or ridicule what we have created. Our landscape is constructed by us, and as such reflects our needs, wishes and desires.