Why I Made Held Light: Shaped By Water
Why I Made Held Light: Shaped By Water
The longer pursuit behind the work
There is a longer story behind Held Light: Shaped By Water.
This body of work grew out of a much longer pursuit of light, structure, force, and the kind of visual awe I had been trying to reach for years.
More than fifteen years ago, I was trying to recreate something I found deeply affecting in nature: the sense of energy, pressure, and elemental force certain natural effects can carry. I wanted to make work that felt alive in the way nature feels alive. I did not want it to be merely decorative or simply expressive. I wanted it to hold tension, movement, and presence.
To get there, I invented techniques meant to mimic natural effects. I splashed paint, scraped it, pushed it with compressed air, and experimented with other processes to create surfaces that felt spontaneous and active. What I was after was not randomness for its own sake. I was trying to reach something that felt imbued with elemental creation.
Some of that work had energy and some of it had force, but over time it began to feel too dependent on catharsis and effect. I realized I was trying to force something that needed a deeper foundation.
Leaving abstraction behind
In March of 2020, in response to the instability COVID brought into my life, I made an impulsive decision to relocate from California to New Jersey. The few days I spent on the road felt like a turning point, and I knew I was leaving abstract painting behind me.
What followed was a very different path. I turned toward plein air painting and not long after that I discovered Paul Ingbretson. Eight months later I began studying with him and it changed the direction of my work in a serious way. Under his teaching I began learning a far more disciplined way of seeing. I learned to observe light, form, color, and structure relationally and with greater subtlety. I learned a method rooted in perception rather than invention.
That training reshaped my standards. It also reshaped my understanding of beauty. I stopped trying to manufacture power through effect and became more interested in how beauty could emerge through clearer seeing and deeper appreciation.
The trip that changed the direction of the work
Painting Monument Valley
After five years under Mr. Ingbretson’s tutelage I made another impulsive decision: to travel across the United States with the intention of making plein air paintings in the National Parks. I wanted to capture the beauty of iconic places like Badlands, the Grand Tetons, Arches, Bryce Canyon, and Zion, ending the journey in California before turning back.
I was traveling in a small Toyota Yaris and trying to cover a great deal of ground, with nearly a dozen added locations, in only three weeks. Because of that, I painted less than I had expected. What I captured in abundance, though, were photographs.
When I returned, I held an online exhibition where I shared both the paintings and many of the photographs. Around that time, a friend and collector of my older abstract paintings pointed out the similarities some of these photographs had to my earlier work. Up to that point, it was only the excitement I felt in the moments of taking those photographs that connected me back to those years of making abstract paintings. His comment made the thread apparent.
Realizing what water had made
As I traveled through those places, I studied them closely and began to realize that nearly everything I was responding to had been shaped by water. The carved surfaces, the hard edges, the sweeping formations, and the monumental walls and passages were all the result of water acting over immense periods of time. That recognition deepened the work for me. It made clear that what I was drawn to was not only beauty or texture, but a level of structure and creation far beyond anything I could invent.
As I spent more time with the photographs, I began noticing those deeper structures inside them more clearly. I became more aware of the carved surfaces, the directional force, and the way light moved through mineral form. I also saw more clearly how certain natural formations could feel almost architectural without losing their connection to the living world.
In that sense, photography proved to be the right medium. A painting could interpret these forms, but a photograph could preserve the astonishing specificity of what water had already made.
The connection to the earlier abstract work
What surprised me most was realizing that these images were carrying something I had been trying to reach years earlier in my abstract paintings. They were carrying force, structure, tension, and what I would later think of as held light.
The difference was that now those qualities were not being pushed into existence through invented techniques. They were being discovered through a more disciplined eye and a medium better suited to my vision.
That realization mattered to me. In a strange way, Held Light: Shaped By Water feels like the resolution of a much longer pursuit. It is not a side project. It is not a decorative print idea. It is the result of years spent trying to understand how visual power actually works, first through less resolved attempts, then through more serious training, and finally through a body of images that felt capable of carrying what I had been after all along.
Earlier concerns, later resolution
When I look back at some of those older abstract paintings now, I can see that the core concerns were already there. I was searching for force, structure, and contained energy. What changed was not the desire itself, but the way of arriving at it.
The pairings below are not meant as literal before and after examples. They are better understood as visual through-lines. They show recurring concerns that were present in the earlier work and later found a more complete expression in Held Light.
Involution 13 | oil on canvas | 72" x 48"
Silent Current | aluminum print | 40" x 60"
In the earlier abstract work, I was already drawn to cool force, vertical structure, and a kind of monumental stillness. In Silent Current, those same concerns return with greater clarity and control.
Dialogue 5 | oil on wood | 5' x 7"
Ember Vault | aluminum print | 40" x 60"
The older abstract work often searched for held warmth, internal light, earthly texture, and pressure contained within form. In Ember Vault, that search feels more resolved, less forced, and more architecturally grounded.
Why this became a print collection
As the work came together, it also became clear that this medium was especially well suited to what I wanted to achieve.
Printed on aluminum, these images hold clarity, depth, and a clean visual presence that allows them to function strongly in space. They can carry across a room, hold up in more intimate viewing, and bring a sense of finish without becoming loud or overstated.
That mattered because I did not want this body of work to become generic décor. I wanted it to feel authored and considered, built from a real eye and a real standard. I wanted it to carry calm, structure, and visual force in a way that could genuinely elevate a room.
That is why Held Light: Shaped By Water is directed toward refined professional interiors and larger residential spaces. The goal is not simply to fill walls, but to shape the feeling of a space with work that carries the presence, structure, and force of nature.
The abstract paintings were an early attempt to reach something elemental. Years of study gave me a more disciplined way to see. The trip provided the raw material. And this body of work became the place where those strands finally came together.
That is the real story behind Held Light: Shaped By Water.