The Aerial Horizon
Forget where your feet are and simply enjoy the view.
Abstract Landscape – Whole
[A Retrospective] Layer upon layer, the earth cooled and solidified forming a whole…not unlike any process of mankind’s tribal expansion, we expand our bases and grow “our people,” forgetting about how distinct yet alike we are…we exclude those on the outside of our circles and imagine greater kinship with those on the inside…that is until a flood (or inland sea) saturates our world, creating wedges and rifts beneath the surface…again we are distinct…when the waters recede, our rough edges are revealed along our fractures and fissures in sheets of color and texture…beautiful in their dissimilarity, layered harmoniously, their beauty exposed to those who can appreciate that the earth requires diversity to make it whole.
Abstract Landscape – Darkness Defining
[A Retrospective] Darkness defines our fault lines…In the deep indigo of shadows, the ill-defined abyss holds our spirits and imaginations captive until the light of day may penetrate the depths of darkness…In that moment of illumination, we rise above the petty indignations that bind us to our insecurities and dark divisions…In the light, we realize that we are all part of a single landscape and the shadows, once dividing us, merely define the textures that make us whole.
Abstract Landscape – Beautiful Confusion
Sensory confusion takes hold as we wonder, are we looking at a fog bank blowing off a ridge line beneath us, or mares’ tails streaming in the troposphere above us? Looking up or looking down…the irrelevance of perspective…whether we are leaves tumbling in a stream or drifting on a breeze, we are part of the scene. The current owns us and our only right is to experience the ride. So as we tumble along our way, forget where your feet are and enjoy the ride.
Abstract Landscape – A Few Drops of Water
[A Retrospective] A gentle mist drifts down from the heavens, hidden from the light of day, the falling particles of water vapor change the local temperature in this pocket of the atmosphere…as the heat continues to rise, escaping the earth, adding latent energy within the clouds, vapor and turbulence continue to rise…eventually, as the weight of water becomes too great, our mist turns to rapidly intensifying showers of harder and harder droplets of water…a dangerous torrent of rain, falling upon the landscape, carving out harsh edges and molding the earth in its path…the once lofty plains are eroded and cut as the force of water seeks the sea…when all is settled and the rains have subsided, we are left with a fractured landscape, the underlying beauty revealed along its deep crags and gullies…the power of a few drops of water on display for eternity. Little things matter.
Clouded Memories
[A Retrospective] As we witness the scene unfold, the trending motion of the weather over the landscape is indisputable…But somewhere in the fluid swirl of memory, we co-opt the forces of nature to satisfy the needs of our narrative…Seeking either drama or solace, the imagined building or dissipating motion of clouds provides fodder for our subconscious creation and our stories are etched in still frames of certainty.
Wonder at the Window
Ever look to the heavens, watching a jet move smoothly through the fluid of our atmosphere, and wonder at the miraculous journey we have made from the daring test flights of a glider in the sand dunes of North Carolina to the routine experience of boarding a jet to take us across the continent at eight miles a minute? I think about this every day…I feel a profound sense of wonder at it all as I sit at my window and watch the earth and clouds roll by…In a little over a hundred years, we have made the impossible dream into a reality that we now unquestioningly accept as routine…When weather causes delays, we grow frustrated and anxious as we are forced by nature to allow our world to slow down. In that deceleration, there are opportunities…to breath, to catch up with old friends we have met along the way, to discuss the important unhurried things, to reflect on where we have been and where we are going, and to wonder at the miracle of it all…and in those moments when the storm dissipates and light again fills the sky, we may forget that our feet are momentarily bound to the earth as we marvel at a jet moving gracefully through a painted sky. So when you find yourself sitting around the airport terminal waiting on the weather, once it has passed, take a breath, look out the window, and take a moment to wonder at the spectacle of it all.
Deaf but to Silence
[A Retrospective] When discordant noises dominate the earth, deafening all ears…We seek an escape in the heavens…Rising above the cacophony, the painful din, we reach the space where the noise falls away like forgotten shadows, washed away by the brilliance of the dawn…Here, amid the silence and the deafening light, we listen again and our senses delight.
Risk Rewards
[A Retrospective] A simple notion of an illuminated path…As we navigate the darkest turmoil and assume great risk, rewards may lie hidden beneath the surface of the worst of our experience and reveal the beauty inherent in the brighter parts of our nature.
Tears of Earth
[A Retrospective] Imagination is discriminating and not everyone is prepared to let their minds wander…but when we do, we make connections between what we see or experience and what was or what might be. I have passed these washes many times, but today, these streaks of painted earth spoke to me. I reacted with an inward look and dreamed of what the earth might be saying… “All of this is temporary and with each breath I take, I accept that everything must change…” We see the signs on the landscape…Rising weather and turbulent skies, rising pressure and quaking landscape, rising temperatures and flowing ice, falling rain and crumbling stone…Imagine what you will. She weeps, though not for change, for the thought of not being considered.
Light’s Effect
With a dizzying sense of dislocation, light removes us from our tactile experience and we become transfixed on the sky above. The muted atmospheric reflections and spectral light around the edges of our perception beg our questions and attention as they convey the mysteries of our atmosphere…they electrify the experience of flight…and again, we forget where our feet are as we enjoy the view.
Substance and Shadows
[A Retrospective] Often times what we perceive as grand, whether great in size or some more intangible sense of stature, lose their grandeur when our perspective changes. Those changes come with distance, expressed in time or space, and the objects of our attention become visually dwarfed or spiritually stunted as we move further away from their shadows. As we take to the air, escaping earthly shadows, we gain a new perspective.
Substance matters. High above the shadow of Angel’s Landing and Zion National Park, though dwarfed in size, it’s greatness can still be imagined. It draws us in. We seek to explore and long to experience the summit, the elevated perspective, the majesty. Our diorama-like view is the beginning of this experience sparked by curiosity and fueled by color, contour, and the tactile sensation of the climb…our spiritual journey begins.
The shadows cast by man, in contrast, are temporal and insignificant. Our delusions of grandeur are laid bare when we weigh our shadows and realize that without substance, our presence is mere illusion. Time and space divide us and we fade away, while Earth and all her monuments remain a testimony to what has come before and what will follow. The real gifts are not apparent in what we see, but in how we see…curiosity and imagination…spark and fuel…memory and projection. These gifts are our substance and differentiation.
Abstract Landscape – The Cresting Plane
[A Retrospective] With the opening line, “I was born in the belly of the deep and rocked on the crest of a wave…” our imaginations draw graphic images of life born from the storm tossed seas, as the words convey a profound connection between our souls and the oceans. The same relationship exists in the heavens that float above the earth, an invisible and illimitable sea. In this region of our world the concepts of flat and round are constantly challenged as every perceived plane bends toward the horizon. Imagining waves of stone as the stepped planes of the Navajo back country curl and crest into the fribbling sandstone froth of the Adeeii Eechii Cliffs, crashing upon the flat sandy floor of the Arizona desert below. With the perspective of our altitude and circular path around the planet, our world bends and animates, evoking emotion and imagination and connecting our souls to this magical place as earth, sea, and sky flow together as one reality.
Apparition
[A Retrospective] Rising from the haze of a humid dusty afternoon, a rootless apparition appears on the horizon…it’s apparent serenity encourages an ambiguous sense of calm wonderment belying the danger hidden beneath the stone facade of this active volcano. We marvel at the spectacles of our natural world while underestimating the forces that shape them…like all forces, there is a balance and we define our existence by how closely we walk the way that divides creation and destruction…perhaps our sense of wonder is drawn from our sense of precariousness and the limits of our ability to effect the tides or the passage of time.
Composing
[A Retrospective] I neither play an instrument nor do I compose music, but that is where the wonder begins…as I listen to the even tempo of a guitar walking along, as though following a level plain, suddenly dip into a jagged storytelling tune that illuminates a rapidly appearing chasm, simultaneously dividing and uniting us…I wonder at the mastery of the composer who can stimulate our visual sense with a sound, drawing a landscape in the listener’s mind, revealing a world unseen, while leading us through the wilderness, together. As in flight, we observe the vastness of a world that fills the spaces in between us, simultaneously dividing and uniting us…we travel a great wilderness and fill our heads with memories of the great wide open that occupies that space and touches each of us…our world revealed and our souls connected.
Nexus
[A Retrospective] Lifting the shades on a new day, we look out on the morning unable to determine if our view is the result of our bleary eyes or our inability to comprehend the nexus between night and day…indistinct, colors emerge from ether, indigo displaced as spectral light creeps across the landscape. A moment of abstract reality before the dream of a material world emerges in stark detail beneath a morning sky.
Abstract Landscape – Flames of Earth
[A Retrospective] The reality of a living planet is one of constant change…the features of her earthly face rise and fall with the ebb and flow of tides, redistributing the foundations of mountains to create new ocean floors or to color a sunset. Nothing vanishes, everything remains…reduced to the elemental pieces that define our world, these particles float on the breeze or drift on the sea where they fill our world with color and texture; they fuel our imaginations so that we may see earthen flames on a frozen landscape.
Source Imagined
[A Retrospective] The late day sun, streaming rays of light through vaporous air, obscured by the rising tide of of water that it has conjured with its radiation sends a repeated message to travelers along the way…The strength of a Spirit may be measured by the strength of the light that remains after the source has vanished from our sight.
Abstract Landscape – Earth Day
[A Retrospective] Protect our wild places for they are the untamed legacy of earth’s spirit and provide our tangible connection to the way of the universe of which we are the tiniest part…constantly in motion, living and breathing, evolving, balancing between creation and entropy…our past and our future.
Abstract Landscape – Twenty-five Cent Words
[A retrospective] Two of my favorite words, for love of the concepts and implications, are “circuitous” and “serendipity.” Perhaps, as my old squadron mates might say, they are twenty-five cent words, but they are connected, meaningful, and especially relevant to our lives among the clouds…We follow a meandering path, adjusting for the airborne currents and blowing gales as we challenge gravity and Coriolis forces. Just as a river twists through the high desert seeking its way to the sea, following a circuitous path as it etches it’s story upon the earth, with each turn a new experience is engrained upon our consciousness as though simultaneously by chance and by fate…the force of serendipity. In these sublime moments, we chance to encounter beauty and we flow through it as if we were meant to be a part of it.
Abstract Landscape – Uplifting
[A Retrospective] Earth rising in a great upheaval, the result of invisible conflicts…pressure and resistance…collision and dispersion. A seemingly static representation of epochal motion displayed upon the canvas of the high desert of Utah.
The Aerial Horizon – Photography
The Aerial Horizon 