Art is a learning skill that lasts a lifetime. You can’t learn it by just reading or taking in a lecture, or looking at a video. You have to do it, and by the doing you can see the results. Experimental skill building, a long journey of exploration, trying different things, finding what you like, wondering why something works and moving that next step closer to a dream called craftsmanship. I have always been an artist, but didn’t try to make a serious goal until November 2003. On that day in November, I wandered into an exhibition of Walter Inglis Anderson at the Smithsonian Industry and Arts Building (that was then closed shortly after): Everything I see is New and Strange. I found picture after picture, watercolor/pencil/ink drawings on plain 11 x 8 1/2 in sheets of paper of the most amazing images. Everything is connected to everything. There is not one blade of grass or one small creature that is not connected to me. Ever since, I devote at least one hour of my day to looking, trying, and evolving my craft trying to unravel those many connections.

Digital technology has changed us dramatically over the last decade. We do things faster, better and ways unthinkable by individuals from previous generations. With photographic computer manipulation software, endless combinations of effects and filters can be applied to an original image. But many of these combinations are just blind alleys that make no coherent sense. We can do many tricks, but often we end up with too little substance. Just recently a UKIYO-E exhibition from the Collection of Kawasaki Isago no Sato Museaum, was held at the Japan Information and Culture Center in Washington D.C. The Japanese traditional woodblock prints were spectacularly captivating, maintaining a timeless quality of simplicity and form. This was the path that I followed: taking real world photographic images and stripping out the nonessential while attempting to maintain meaning. Form follows feeling. And the Japanese woodblocks capture the control, precision, and clarity of the Edo period landscapes and natural forms. Digital Woods is a mirror of the Japanese woodblock tradition. Digital cameras, computer software/hardware and large inkjet printers have the complement traits of precision, control and color nuance. But in this body of work, instead of creating prints of nature on wood, I captured images of wood on digitally produce prints.