I have been painting the urban environment in an abstract manner for twenty years. Early on I painted empty sidewalks and parking lots, transforming the mundane urban landscape with diffuse atmosphere and exaggerated color. In 2009, I began using midwestern internet traffic cameras as a reference, creating increasingly abstracted images. What interested me most were the undifferentiated stretches of the flat American Midwest and the mercurial weather conditions. In my paintings, the empty vistas and changing light evoke a degree of wistful contemplation. Influences include 19th century landscape painting and 20th century American abstract painting. I am committed to the transformation of the urban environment even as I long for the consolations of nature. The tension between abstraction and illusionism in my work generates something familiar and yet unknown, of this world and yet also otherworldly.