This is a painting of the Tensile range in Summit County Colorado, where I grew up skiing. Very specifically, the Tenmile range was what we would see from the B1 expert chairlift at Copper Mountain, where my family had a condo and was our sacred retreat each weekend. On one special occasion when I as about a young teen my family, friends, and cousins and godmother hiked over the saddle of the range you see on the left-hand side. This was a cumulative experience, while we grew up going on hikes, this hike stood out, as my sister crashed on the summer go kart ramp on the other side of the mountain in Breckinridge, which proved to be a deep move that provoked thoughts of mortality, coming of age, and more. But most of our time spent there at Copper was celebratory, and although my mom doesn’t ski, a family experience and a time where I would ski with my friends, enjoying life and my youth.

I love Turner, and his ever-present sublime suns, and all they can represent in terms of the grandeur and beauty and overwhelming power of nature, and the paintings of Friedrich, the Hudson River School, and the Germans who came and painted the Rockies. I wanted to create a contemporary scene that equated the gravitas of those ideologies, but also the Cezanne-like moments of my unconscious projecting onto the surface with my conscious hand and brush. The early Spring skiing, while fun taking this picture after 10 years being reunited with my sister and dad skiing was exalting, but a little edgy, as with global warming it was a little too warm for that time of year, the snow crustier than I remembered it, the lifts a little too empty with the high cost of skiing these days, and with lack of snow, a pastime (especially skiing with two skis!) that might not last so much longer in the Rockies. When I was skiing as a teen, it was definitely my coming of age story, and while painting this I listened to the great 80’s music of my youth, but while painting it, it was the last painting I created in my New York City studio before moving out West at age 50 to live, paint, and teach in California, so I was feeling a bit melancholic about my loss of youth, but also excited and exuberant for what laid beyond the Mountain of time, proceeding from middle age and my past into my future…